Love or hate your IV pumps?

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Hi everyone,

My hospital is looking to order new IV pumps. Can you guys share what brand you are using, and anything good or bad about it? Spare no details! I'd love to hear thoughts on usage, maintenance, cost... any input will be very helpful.

Thanks much!

Steffi

The modularity of the Alaris pumps looks really cool....a bit more functional than the Sigma, I think. I like the Guardrail library, too.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Alaris 'smart' pumps. After doing a very minimal amount of research on line I can't tell for sure if CareFusion Alaris pumps and Cardinal Health Alaris pumps are built by the same company or not. My hospital uses Cardinal Alaris pumps. However, after viewing both of the pumps online I believe they both operate in the same manner. As a travel nurse I have seen plum pumps and one other type of pump that I can't remember what it was called. In my opinion I would NEVER use anything other than Alaris smart pump if I got to choose. It's got a ton of safety features, the guardrail safety, the programmable drug library, the ease of adding additional lines and or other compatable equipment. I love them soooooooooo much!
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Specializes in ICU, Telemetry.

Sigma Spectrum, and I would love to put them all in the parking lot and drive over them with a tank. While the drug library's nice, the pumps beep all the time for NOTHING. Non-existent upstream occlusions, non-existent air in the line, you can't get a breakdown of piggybacks vs. maint. fluids when you clear them, and if you've got a code going on, you better just plan on ripping the bags off of the pole and using pressure bags, because you'll spend 5 minutes arguing with the programming. Buttons are small and some of our "men folk" with big hands complain it's hard to hit one button and they are always hitting two together. We asked the Nurse educator who was teaching us about them (Vendor from the company) if she used them at the hospital she worked at, and she said, "oh, no. It takes too much time to use them in an emergency." Which we now agree with.

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Specializes in Community, OB, Nursery.

Baxter smart pumps....hate them. They beep over the tiniest air bubble in the line, and they are not easy to program. God forbid you have to run a secondary line.

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Hospira Plum pumps-they are awful! Beep constantly, nothing but problems!

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Specializes in Peds/Neo CCT,Flight, ER, Hem/Onc.
Is the Alaris you are talking about by CareFusion or Cardinal? Actually, are they different from each other?

Thank you!!

The pump is made by Carefusion. Cardinal is a distributor of health/medical supplies and devices.

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Specializes in ER, progressive care.

We use Hospira Plum A pumps. The drug library is nice and I also like how you do the dosing with them (and set them at things like mg/hr or mcg/kg/min vs. only have mL/hr to work with), but they always beep for non-existant problems!!! Air in line my a**....:banghead: I've had a lot of pumps with internal errors, pumps that won't turn on (despite being plugged in), pumps that say the battery is low (despite being plugged in)...then I have to go hunt for another pump. They also only have one channel so if you have to run a second line, you better go find another pump. You can piggyback, though. Our hospital also carries the three channel ones, but those are reserved specifically for ICU.

The programming is easy to use. Wouldn't be good in an emergent situation, though.

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Specializes in Orthopedic, LTC, STR, Med-Surg, Tele.

We have Hospira Plum A's too. I have had to learn to troubleshoot (air in the line makes it freak out). Also, distal occlusion beeping can get really annoying. They are simple to program, we have a secondary line in each pump. However, the beep-beep beep-beep haunts me in my dreams.

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wow, i had no idea so many pumps are bad at beeping too much.

all your comments so far are so helpful guys (some are quite fun to read as well:)!

anyone good with their customer support? cardinal was mentioned...

thanks guys! :loveya:

we use alaris smart pumps by cardinal. look them up on the web. their customer support is awesome! easy to learn and use.
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Specializes in Trauma, ER, ICU, CCU, PACU, GI, Cardiology, OR.

we use to use the hospira pumps in our facility however, they drove us crazy with the constant beeps and for some reason some of our staff became immune to the sound, even though you could hear 4 or 5 going off at the same time in different locations :no: that's when we change to the alaris smart pumps no complains here.

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Specializes in Orthopedic, LTC, STR, Med-Surg, Tele.

One hellish night, I was floated to the general med-surg. Nurses and aides were stretched pretty thin. After taking my unusually large patient load, I was treated to IV pumps beeping all night long. In different rooms. With no one turning them off or silencing them. Hell.

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Specializes in ER/SICU/Med-Surg/Ortho/Trauma/Flight.

Oh god, I can see I am not the only one who hates the stupid plum pumps and when I worked icu when we had them I got the joy of putting up with the three way ones I can still here the beep-beep-beep in my sleep, so we now have the alaris medley smart pumps and they are awesome, our sister hospital uses the braun pumps, I know they use a cassette device like the plums but not much else.

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our sister hospital uses the braun pumps, I know they use a cassette device like the plums but not much else.

Braun is German, right? Anything good or bad about them? Thanks!

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