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

Sigma pump...hate them!...damn upstream occlusion alarm because it was meant to have a totally straight vertical line between the IV bag and the pump (per the manufacturer)...so the piggyback highest up, the primary is a foot lower, that would make the pump down between my hips and knees...that's just plain stupid...or if you raise the pump up above my waist area, I can't reach the piggyback because I'm petite...mmm...so upstream occlusion it is. The alarm noise starts out soft then becomes louder if you don't answer it right away. The alarm is difficult to identify which room it's coming from so you have to hunt down which room it's coming from and that wastes time! The size is small but they are all individual with individual plugs, so a med-surg patient may have a few pumps, but ICU patients can have a dozen or more. We had to get special "U" shaped brackets made with special power strips attached because we didn't have enough electrical outlets or IV poles for all the pumps. They are lightweight but the sheer number makes a trip to ct or MRI a royal pain in the butt. They also shut off when they fail, but the error/fail alarm is obnoxious! They have a hard limit to max out at but if the doctor orders higher than that, you've got to reprogram the pump into basic mode. It takes a pharmacy committee meeting to get the drug library changed.

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Specializes in Infusion Nursing, Home Health Infusion.

Just switching from the Braun space pump to Alaris smart pump. The Braun was just OK...very small and not intuitive. The key pad reminded me of the older version CADD pumps which I did not like that much. I worked witht th Alaris in a traing calss an already like it tons more that the Braun.We only had the braun 1.5 yrs what does that tell you!

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I don't like Alaris Pumps. If you are not careful with the clamps you can bolus a patient by accident when the door is open. This actually happened. If you forget to unclamp the secondary line it'll run the primary instead and will not alarm. Since it is gravity based it will not infuse secondary line properly that has a drug in a glass bottle because of the increased resistance. The tubing doesn't fit the pump properly on the upper section. It can be difficult to get the air bubbles out. Also there are 3 recalls on these pumps that I know off, so questionable reliability. Before this one we were using Hospira Abbott Plum Pumps. They were great but didn't have the drug library and they are not the quietest pumps. The new Hospira A+ has the drug library and hopefully runs quieter. If so my vote goes to Hospira A+. The design is a classic. It also comes in 3 pump version.

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We use Alaris and that's all I know without a pump in front of me. We also use Guardrails as well.

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I don't like Alaris Pumps. If you are not careful with the clamps you can bolus a patient by accident when the door is open. This actually happened. If you forget to unclamp the secondary line it'll run the primary instead and will not alarm. Since it is gravity based it will not infuse secondary line properly that has a drug in a glass bottle because of the increased resistance. The tubing doesn't fit the pump properly on the upper section. It can be difficult to get the air bubbles out. Also there are 3 recalls on these pumps that I know off, so questionable reliability. Before this one we were using Hospira Abbott Plum Pumps. They were great but didn't have the drug library and they are not the quietest pumps. The new Hospira A+ has the drug library and hopefully runs quieter. If so my vote goes to Hospira A+. The design is a classic. It also comes in 3 pump version.

Glass bottles.... HATE THEM! The biggest new thing at my hospital is Ofirmev, the IV Tylenol, and getting the bottles spiked right so they'll infuse correctly is a real pain. The other night I forgot to vent the tubing and it collapsed the tubing in on itself. The pump was alarming "Empty Container" and it took me a minute to figure out what was going on!

Lately we have begun having a problem with pumps constantly alarming "Air In Line" when there is no air. Its about to drive me to drink!

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Specializes in Gerontology, Med surg, Home Health.

Apparently I REALLY need a vacation. I saw the title of this post and at first thought IV pumps were a kind of high heel:sarcastic:

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Specializes in NICU, ICU, PICU, Academia.
I don't like Alaris Pumps. If you are not careful with the clamps you can bolus a patient by accident when the door is open. This actually happened. If you forget to unclamp the secondary line it'll run the primary instead and will not alarm. Since it is gravity based it will not infuse secondary line properly that has a drug in a glass bottle because of the increased resistance. The tubing doesn't fit the pump properly on the upper section. It can be difficult to get the air bubbles out. Also there are 3 recalls on these pumps that I know off, so questionable reliability. Before this one we were using Hospira Abbott Plum Pumps. They were great but didn't have the drug library and they are not the quietest pumps. The new Hospira A+ has the drug library and hopefully runs quieter. If so my vote goes to Hospira A+. The design is a classic. It also comes in 3 pump version.

BBM: Our facility got them, and we switched back to the Plum A for our NICU, PICU and PEDS for this reason. We're still dukeing it out with the pump people, as far as I know.

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Specializes in ICU, telemetry, LTAC.

I have used Horizon, really old brown Baxters, the colleague- both the triple channel ones and the single channel ones, and now use the sigmas by Baxter. Horizons were ok, except the big "pillow" magnet thing in the middle of its lines would do an annoying air trap during priming that made you need to beat it half to death to get the air to a point where you could aspirate it or re-prime it. The Colleague were very annoying in that they even MADE a single channel pump- I mean why make it weigh 15 pounds and be a foot tall if it could be 3 inches taller and hold 3 lines?! Plus they had recalls for dumping fluid and I did see some that I suspected were doing that during pressor infusions.

The sigmas are okay except that sometimes I have to put up a cheat sheet and program it in basic fluid mode to get it to do what I want; levophed and nitro should not have a max dose. The max is either symptom reversal or black hands and feet... and that isn't something the pump can know. I like that they are small, and I like that our facility has poles with the power strip built in that are made to hold 4 pumps. In reality we can put about 6 on one pole but it gets a bit interesting with that much going on.

I haven't met a pump yet that doesn't beep and annoy people. But yeah, the sigmas have an upstream occlusion fetish.

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We use Hospira Plum and at first I HATED them! But now that I have gotten used to it I really like them. I also like that the primary and piggyback bags can be at the same level and both can infuse at the same time.

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Specializes in Trauma- Med/Surg.

We use Braun at our hospital They are pretty user friendly. They are small and compact so you can stack them pretty easily. They do seem to beep a lot though.

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