If you could invent nursing supplies, what would it be?

[rn2bn07]

There are so many things in nursing that we use that could have been built or remodeled to better the quality and comfort of our patients. Personally, I hate gluing fecal pouches on pt's bottoms with fragile skin and breakdown. As soon as, the glue hit their skin they are squirming and screaming. Even with intubated pt's, you can tell its painful because their vitals start doing crazy things. I wish I could reinvent something more comfortable and easier to apply these where it would also be effective for the pt and for me.

[canoehead, BSN, RN]

Put a wad of sterile cotton balls in the diaper, then squeeze them out.

[Shanny246]

I would love to see a better way to draw blood. The tourniquet for example has been around for so long, and I feel there must be a better way out there to get blood. I have seen my son pricked over 20 times during a 2 week hospital stay, and it was heartbreaking. There has to be a better way out there!

[ozoneranger]

Dear God,

I would like a magic wand.

Thank you.

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

Rooms on a chain and pulley system like in a dry cleaners, so you can pull the room the rooms to a central nurses station area instead of having to go to the room. It would save a lot of walking.

[canoehead, BSN, RN]

I would love to see a better way to draw blood. The tourniquet for example has been around for so long, and I feel there must be a better way out there to get blood. I have seen my son pricked over 20 times during a 2 week hospital stay, and it was heartbreaking. There has to be a better way out there!

They actually have implanted ports, or PICC lines that would do what you are looking for. Ports require surgery, and PICCS are more likely to clog- some hospitals won't allow blood draws from them. sometimes patients land in the hospital for what looks like a short stay,and end up staying for weeks. If we knew right at the outset how long or how many pokes they'd need I'd bet we'd triple the number of ports and PICCS used. If I had a kid that needed sticks more than twice a month I'd be looking for something like that. You KNOW they'll get stuck only the one time for each access, and if they are in the hospital we keep it accessed, so they get no sticks at all.

[canoehead, BSN, RN]

Whoops, double post.

[RainDreamer, BSN, RN]

A butt patter.

Would sure make life in the NICU much better!

[niobe527]

Since I work in LTC can I have someone invent an anti-gravity device to keep the pt IN the bed and not the floor, so I would just have to chart how many times they tried to defy gravity and not incident reports

[fuzzywuzzy, CNA]

I know this thread is old but I think they need to invent gloves with finger pads that are just a little bit sticky... because I know I can't be the only one who's had a little "accident" when trying to clean out a brand new colostomy bag. There I am squirting water into the bag and whoosh! that smooth plastic just slipped right out of my fingers.

On the flip side, they also need to make gloves that don't get stuck and hopelessly tangled up when removing tape.

[Shanny246]

"They actually have implanted ports, or PICC lines that would do what you are looking for. Ports require surgery, and PICCS are more likely to clog- some hospitals won't allow blood draws from them. sometimes patients land in the hospital for what looks like a short stay,and end up staying for weeks. If we knew right at the outset how long or how many pokes they'd need I'd bet we'd triple the number of ports and PICCS used. If I had a kid that needed sticks more than twice a month I'd be looking for something like that. You KNOW they'll get stuck only the one time for each access, and if they are in the hospital we keep it accessed, so they get no sticks at all."

Connor (my son) actually did have a PICC placed during that stay. However, they did not use it for blood draws, they had too much trouble getting it all the way in, so it was slowly coming out. They needed it for vancomycin which he had to be on to bring his fevers down. He had been running very high fevers for 5 months (up to 105)....so they still had to stick him. When I mentioned the port to them right before one of his surgeries, they told me they didn't want to do it because it would be likely to get infected in him.

[zamboni]

I've had an idea for a long time for a Pez dispenser type thingy, only to use it for giving nitro tabs. Sometimes, trying to pick those little suckers up with gloves on can be a challenge, and I hate having to put my fingers in a patient's mouth to place it under the tounge. I actually came up with the idea on the ambulance (back in the days before nitro spray) where I more than once dropped the whole tiny bottle while fumbling with the teeny tiny tabs.

I kinda put it on the back burner when the spray came out. But now at my facility, we have a doc that abhors paste...and we don't carry spray. Just a little popper that you hit a button, and it pops out one perfectly placed tab.

[NeoNurseTX, RN]

A baby butt patter!