PICU Question!

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Hello PICU peeps!

Here goes my first post on AN! When you have patients on high doses of pressors, do you have a secondary (I.e. back-up) pumps already programmed and ready to go in case of pump failure/issues with the primary pump?

Thoughts?

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PCVICU and peds oncology.

Nope. We don't have enough pumps for the drips we are already running without having all our vasoactives on back-up pumps. We do try to have a spare pump to allow for double-pumping when it's time to change out syringes and/or tubing though.

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Nope not here either. If I have a kid on high pressors on line change day I will hunt down a transport pole and enough pumps for a completely identical set-up to what they have running and get everything strung and running for a few hours for a quick and easy line change

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Specializes in NICU, ICU, PICU, Academia.
Nope not here either. If I have a kid on high pressors on line change day I will hunt down a transport pole and enough pumps for a completely identical set-up to what they have running and get everything strung and running for a few hours for a quick and easy line change

We refer to this as 'marinating' the fluids!

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The reason I posed this question...... At shift change the other day - a kid was on epi (high dose) and the pump mysteriously malfunctioned. By the time someone ran into the room, pressures were already in the toilet! It was a joyous shift change... Just led me to wondering how other units worked :)

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Nope... We are in the same boat, hardly enough pumps to go around as it is.

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PACU.

We are lucky in NICU and PICU to have enough oumps, CSR always claims to be out... Other floors hoard them and hide the pump finders.

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