needless ports on transthoracic lines

[handsonhealing]

Can anyone who works in PICU or Peds Cardiac ICU give me some feedback on using a safe site or needless inection port on transthoracic lines? Specifically, at the end of the IV tubing of drips, connecting to the stopcock or the hub? It's our practice to do so in my unit but we are finding there is always some air inside the safe site that's difficult to remove.

Wondering what other units are doing?

[NotReady4PrimeTime, RN]

We don't use them for that very reason. The staff was never properly inserviced on the Interlink system and weren't even aware that you have to prime them before putting them on the Luer lock. Rather than going with bedside inservicing the decision was made that they would not be used for anything. We have them on our supplies carts and only use them for any reason when we aren't able to get dead-enders (which seems to be most of the time now!). We are supposed to be moving to the ClearSite system soon, but I have no faith in the training process and just know we'll continue to see problems.