Leaving syringes on tubing

[JaxCCRN]

Hi,

I'm looking forward to tapping into the infusion crowd's expertise. I was always taught to not leave syringes attached to tubing once your done flushing/giving meds/whatever you're doing with the syringe. This recently came up in conversation at work. Some folks actually made pretty compelling arguments for leaving a syringe attached. I couldn't find an INS standard to address this. Do any of you have references addressing syringes being left or removed from lines?

[chare]

I'm curious, aside from leaving a syringe to a closed stopcock on a pressure monitoring line, what compelling arguments were made in favor of leaving syringes attached?

[Asystole RN]

Keep in mind that not only should you review the standards but also the IFU for the products.

The fact that they sell obturator (dead-ender) caps makes me think that the manufacturer of that stopcock or IV tubing would not be pleased and especially the syringe manufacturer who I am sure did not design their syringes to take the place of an obturator.

[la_chica_suerte85, BSN, RN]

I've only been told it's bad practice to leave the flush syringe on the tubing because of infection risk. I can't find any information stating that is true, though. I guess since we use Max Zero caps, it's leaving the valve open and anything can get in. If there is no syringe on the cap, then the valve is closed and the tubing remains free of anything getting in. I reason that this might be true since our NS and D5W flushes aren't sterile unless in a sterile kit.