Why would a nurse push IV potassium?

[Nsco2018]

I saw a post on fb earlier by a pt who's in the hospital for DKA. Says they are being pushed potassium. Granted I'm still a student, but I thought this was totally a no no.

[JKL33]

I wonder if on FB there is any chance that the information might not be accurate.

[Wuzzie]

JKL33 said:

I wonder if on FB there is any chance that the information might not be accurate.

Ya think?!

[CharleeFoxtrot, BSN, RN]

JKL33 said:

I wonder if on FB there is any chance that the information might not be accurate.

Literal LOL!

[chare]

JKL33 said:

I wonder if on FB there is any chance that the information might not be accurate.

But, it's on the internet, it's got to be true.

[chelynn]

Since the post came from a patient I'm sure they're not real clear on everything about their treatment . You never push potassium

[Ddestiny, BSN, RN]

It's amazing how little some patients know about their own treatments. When I worked on the floor where most of our patients would be on just fluids with maybe intermittent antibiotics, I often have patients or family members point to the bag of NS and ask "is that a morphine drip?". No, you're walking in the hall and taking PO pain meds like the majority of post-ops do on the floor. They just don't know how things work in medicine because it's outside of their normal experience.

Depending upon exactly how it was worded, I could see someone saying that staff is "pushing potassium" to mean in the same way that we "push fluids"....meaning we give a lot, not necessarily meaning that we're doing an IV push of fluids. Some patients pick up on just enough medical jargon to make their statements confusingly incorrect.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

chelynn said:

Since the post came from a patient I'm sure they're not real clear on everything about their treatment . You never push potassium

I've seen it done a time or two. Once when a young man coded, as a last ditch attempt the cardiologist ordered 20 mEq of KCl given push. The patient's K+ was 1.2. I got him the KCl, he pushed it himself. The patient died anyway.

And another time long, long ago, in another hospital far, far away, the Pharmacy drew up all of our central line flush syringes, labeled them and sent them to the floor in bags of 10 each. After a couple of patients coded while their central lines were being flushed, the flush syringes were sent for analysis. As it turned out, each 10cc syringe contained 20 mEq of KCl. One patient who lived through it told me that she felt her face flush, and it "got all prickly feeling. And I tasted salt."

[emmjayy, BSN, RN]

One of my favorite instructors in nursing school would always get on the subject of "IV push potassium" and would yell "THE ONLY TIME YOU WILL EVER PUSH IV POTASSIUM IS IF YOUR PATIENT IS ON DEATH ROW AND IT'S EXECUTION DAY!!" aka, a nurse would only ever push potassium if they wanted to kill someone.

IV potassium through a pump is a totally expected treatment for DKA, though.

[MunoRN, RN]

We do actually give IVP potassium all the time, it's just slower than most pushes. The problem is that with a lot of IV terminology, there is no universal definition, and there are some contexts that consider anything other than a continuous infusion to be a push, using the term interchangeably with intermittent. It seems pretty clear for the majority, there are continuous infusions, intermittent infusions, and pushes.

[bd2rn]

It's possible for a patient to survive having IVP KCL, but it won't be pretty. I know someone who killed a pt that way, by accident/carelessness. That was back when we had the vials on the floor and the kcl was right beside the nacl, and the color of the caps was somewhat similar. She drew up the wrong stuff to flush the hep lock, and that was it. Anyway, if you're taking longer than 20 min or "push" something (the length of time it takes to avoid lots and lots and lots of pvcs and so forth), then you're not really "pushing" it. You're just serving as a human IV pump. Might as well get a real one, if you can. My $0.02

[Ruixi13, BSN, RN]

OMG that's some messed up ****... I couldn't even imagine being the nurse who receives mislabeled syringes like that and administering it.. >_