When drawing blood from a double lumen PICC line, which has TPN running do you
1/ Flush with 10mls of normal saline, pull back 10mls of blood discard and throw that away before taking your sample.
2/ Turn off TPN and wait for 30 mins and then draw blood, after having flushed with normal saline, drawing back, throw first sample away and then take a second sample.
3/ Draw the blood without flushing
4/ Turn off TPN, immediatly flush the line, draw blood, discard first specimen and then take a second sample.
We don't stop TPN at all. You clean and flush your second port with 10ml Saline, draw and waste ten of blood, then with clean syrenge draw the amount of blood needed from lab. Then flush with 10ml of saline and then loc with 3ml of Heparin. Thats my biggest point is Hep lock after each use. These picc lines are so important but it seems as thow nurses forget to flush and hep lock. Then we have to depend on Cath flo to fix, which is crazy.
I think my hospital used to stop TPN, flush other line, draw back and then take the sample (then flush and hep lock, of course). At least, that's what I was taught.
Now if the patient has TPN, they just do a stick in a different vein. I know it's one more stick for the patient, but the lab was having such trouble with the skewed lab results that I guess they decided it was worth it. (I'm not working at that hospital currently, so I don't know if it's changed)
LVN2beRN
9 Posts
We don't stop TPN at all. You clean and flush your second port with 10ml Saline, draw and waste ten of blood, then with clean syrenge draw the amount of blood needed from lab. Then flush with 10ml of saline and then loc with 3ml of Heparin. Thats my biggest point is Hep lock after each use. These picc lines are so important but it seems as thow nurses forget to flush and hep lock. Then we have to depend on Cath flo to fix, which is crazy.
We Hep Lock our Central lines with 5 of Hep.
This is all part of our policy.
Cris