Kara Hoffman

THANK YOU. Not sure why people would think that TWO experienced nurses (since i stated both were in the room) would even let me leave the room with an uncapped PICC hub hanging out to grab the flush that i obviously should have had in the first place.

I did not leave the room. The heparin flush was on the bed right in front of me, still capped. I held the hub, did not let it touch anything after disconnecting the saline, and uncapped the heparin flush.

Hi! I’m a new grad currently orienting to my unit and this question came up the other day. Basically, I was heparin locking a PICC at shift change. I disconnected the IV tubing, scrubbed the hub, attached a saline syringe and checked blood return then flushed. Then, I went to grab the heparin flush. I asked my preceptor if I needed to scrub the hub again before attaching the heparin flush, and she said no (which is also how I learned to do it during my critical care rotation in school). So I uncapped the heparin and went to attach the syringe, and the oncoming nurse I had given report to kind of hit me on the shoulder and said “alcohol swab please.” I’m not confused on which is the proper practice, and we didn’t have time to see if our hospital policy addresses this. So, if you’re giving multiple meds or flushes through a PICC at the same time, do you scrub the hub before attaching each syringe, or do you just do it once?