ICU ingenuity? Tricks of the trade?

[jamst149]

Basically wondering/looking for little things people might do to make their job easier.

One that I use that tends to make people think "why did I never think of that" is this.

It's regarding a rectal tube. We usually attach a foley as the drainage bag. So my "trick" is to take a piece of pressure tubing and attach it to the sample port from the foley. Then you can use a big 30+cc leur lock syrince to flush the tubing to keeping it patent without having to turn the patient. This can be especially helful for the "large" ones

Anyway wondering if anyone else has tricks up their sleeve that makes the job easier?

[calivianya, BSN, RN]

We don't use heparin flushes for PICCs at my current hospital. They think the rate of HIT is too high or something. What happens is we use a crap ton of tPA to unclot our lines instead of preventing clots in the first place. It's tedious and time consuming. I miss my heparin flushes.

I was talking about this with one of my fellow nurses, who mentioned she usually keeps one extra vial of heparin on her at all times, and if she has a slow-drawing port, she will use her extra heparin like tPA and fix the port herself, drawing out the heparin after half an hour or so when the line works well again. Obviously very against the rules, but this was just too good a shortcut to keep it to myself.

[ixchel]

I love drawing blood off CVP lines so much that I wish they'd just CVP every single patient in the ED.

I just read in another thread using a respiratory mask to jerry-rig a better seal for a makeshift female urinal. I'm looking forward to trying that!

[gatoraims RN]

I love drawing blood off CVP lines so much that I wish they'd just CVP every single patient in the ED.

I just read in another thread using a respiratory mask to jerry-rig a better seal for a makeshift female urinal. I'm looking forward to trying that!

Very intersetd in how to make a female urinal! Please share.

[ixchel]

Very intersetd in how to make a female urinal! Please share.

Use a respiratory CPAP mask attached to a regular urinal. Creates a seal.

[gatoraims RN]

Going to have to try this thanks.

[OhioCCRN, MSN, NP]

*bump