Pain pumps

[nursinadream]

What's your procedure for filling pain pump cylinders? I find dispensing up to 12 bottles of Bupivicaine quite time consuming. And the scrubs are in a rush to get it on the table so they can transfer to pump. Anybody using the pre-filled? Our industry rep from ON-Q tells us they are available. But we are expecting conflict from our pharmacy since they will miss the income of "distributing". We use about 30 pumps a week in our 14 room OR. And the use is growing among services.

Deb

[nursinadream]

Very informative from an industry Rep. I would say this is not well known, understood in many practice settings. Many well made points that OR staff have never been educated on. I've never seen a policy or this type of in depth education.

Deb

[answerman]

Hello Deb:

Thank you for your positive feed back.

Regards,

TJG

[answerman]

More information from the University of Chicago on pain pumps.

The STRYKER Pain Pump 2 has been discontinued. It is not an "elastomeric" pump but a disposable programmable electronic infusion pump.

http://dig.pharm.uic.edu/faq/Sep10/elastomeric.aspx

Regards,

Answerman

[Argo]

We use about 40 a week at our hospital. System wide around the city our hospitals use about 140 a week. They are all fill in the pharmacy per joint commission. When ordered we send the pain ball with a copy of the order to pharmacy. Usually on short cases they put it on in pacu but we put the catheters in andprime them in the OR. We use On-Q.

[answerman]

That seems like best practice. I see no real need for the pain pump to be in the O.R. The bolus of local anesthetic usually has a half life of perhaps up to 4 hours.

Is this a tissue / wound infiltration or peripheral nerve block or a combination of both techiques?

One large insurance carrier has made a statement regarding which approach they intend to pay for and which technique they do not pay for based on efficacy as demonstrated by VAS Pain Scores and reduction of adjunct narcotics ordered.