Stripping an IV?

Nurses General Nursing

Published

What does Stripping an IV mean? I just read this in another thread, and have never heard the phrase before.

Specializes in NICU.

This practice was never even mentioned to us in nursing school. I'd be worried about blowing the vein from the increased pressure, let alone clots. We're not even supposed to milk chest tubes on my unit anymore.

Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

"Stripping" an IV is an unacceptable way of flushing and clearing an obstruction out of an IV line. The reason is because it creates a very high pressure in the IV line and literally causes any blood clot sitting at the tip of the IV cannula to be jettisoned off into the patient's vein. It could also possibly result in a rupture of the patient's vein. It is also likely that this IV will go bad within the next 24 hours from the trauma of doing this. This is very bad practice. Don't do it.

The actual procedure is to take the IV tubing and either use the fingers or a smooth instrument and squeeze the IV tubing against them and proceed to slide them down toward the IV site maintaining your pinch on the IV tubing. This increases the pressure in the IV tubing and forces whatever is in the IV tubing forward. Another way is to just take up the tubing and fold it up a couple of times and then just wring it like you were squeezing water out of a washcloth. Please don't do any of them.

The correct procedure to remove a clot from an IV is to disconnect the IV tubing from the hub of the IV, attach a 10cc syringe and gently aspirate and try to dislodge the clot. If you are successful then gently flush the IV cannula with saline to establish better patency and wash any remaining blood cells out of the cannula. If you can't remove the clot or establish patency, the correct thing to do is to D/C the IV and restart it. However, in my many years of experience (and I was an IV therapist for many years) most nurses won't restart the IV because they aren't good at it so they will do whatever it takes to try to get the IV to run, including flushing or stripping it, at the expense of the patient. Shame on them!

I think the OP might be referring to this

https://allnurses.com/forums/2514667-post33.html

Before we used pumps, we would put a strip of tape on the side of an IV and mark the beginning and end times, then times in between, to help us gauge if an IV was running at the correct rate. For example, an IV running at 125cc/hr would be an 8 hour bottle (back then, we had glass IVs or hard plastic containers, not bags like we use today). So the first mark at the 1000 cc mark (on top) would be 8am. At zero (on the bottom), we'd write 4pm; at 500cc, 12n; 750cc, 10am; 250cc, 2pm. Then we'd time and set our drip rate. Having those strips on the sides of the IVs allowed us to eyeball the bottle and quickly determine if the IV was flowing at the correct rate.

Specializes in Rehab, LTC, Peds, Hospice.
I think the OP might be referring to this

https://allnurses.com/forums/2514667-post33.html

Before we used pumps, we would put a strip of tape on the side of an IV and mark the beginning and end times, then times in between, to help us gauge if an IV was running at the correct rate. For example, an IV running at 125cc/hr would be an 8 hour bottle (back then, we had glass IVs or hard plastic containers, not bags like we use today). So the first mark at the 1000 cc mark (on top) would be 8am. At zero (on the bottom), we'd write 4pm; at 500cc, 12n; 750cc, 10am; 250cc, 2pm. Then we'd time and set our drip rate. Having those strips on the sides of the IVs allowed us to eyeball the bottle and quickly determine if the IV was flowing at the correct rate.

In my recertification class I just finished, this is what they said as well. They also encouraged us to do this, whether on a pump or not. All I could think of was - more to do, great!:uhoh3:

Specializes in ER.

Stripping an IV is usually when the dressing is changed due to being very blood or not sticking well if patient is ver y dirty or diaphoretic. Being an ER nurse we do not always use J loop because that reduces my 18 gauge catheter and double lumen catheters effectiveness, if I have a trauma or serious cardiac patient I need to dump fluids and meds quickly and a j loop in an emergency beleive it or not dedreases the effectiveness of my large catheter IV's, when I do not have traumas or serious cardiac compromised patients I and most ER RN's will and do use J loops. If you get a patient that started off in ER remember I have had usually 6 other addmissions, transferes and walk in patient within moments of each other and been able to draw labs, place IV's do EKG's and have other ancillary departments help stabilize my patient before you have seen him once he has been stabilized.

+ Add a Comment