Outpatient Infusion Center

[Robinrmacd]

My hospital has recently opened an outpatient infusion center. We need to set up some performance improvement objectives. Does anyone have any ideas? Also, would anyone who works in a center such as mine have any nursing documentation forms they would be willing to share? If so, they can be sent to [email protected]. Thanks so much.

[CritterLover, BSN, RN]

what kind of infusions are you going to be doing?

the infusion center i work at does a lot of antibiotics, as well as remicaid/aredia/ivig/steriods.

we mostly focus on line infections/occlusions since many (though not most) of our patients have piccs or ports.

our documentation form mostly has a top part for name of drug/amount/solution, time started, time stopped, infusion device, iv access, and what sort of iv maintenence was done (dressing change, site rotation). also has a spot to put any lab collections down. then there is a bottom part with room for a narrative. we have a vs log form for those infusions that require freq vs. remicaid has a pre-printed documentation form they will give you that works pretty well.

[Robinrmacd]

Thanks for your reply. We do pretty much the same type of infusions as you with the addition of outpatient chemo. The Remicade form is a good idea. I may print that and add it to our regular documentation. We do not do much in the way of narrative charting - just the basics (PICC flushed easily with good blood return, tol. infusion well...) Do you have a problem with occluded PICC ports? Our hospital doesn't use Heparin, which I understand is pretty much the way it is these days, but we have found in the outpatient setting that our PICCs occlude. We do a vigorous flush before and after the infusion (10cc, 20cc after blood draw) and we still see some occluded ports. Thus, we went back to using Heparin.