NewNurseDee

Hi everyone, I am a newly graduate registered nurse working on a busy general surgical and medical ward. I am also recently new to allnurses.com. I just have a quick question regarding PICC lines that perhaps some of you lovely nurses with experience may be able to help me with. I have recently been through my training for PICC lines however there is one question that I have been curious about for a long time that simply has been left unanswered by many staff who have trained me. Obviously when dealing with peripheral IV access you want to make sure- to the best of your ability- no amount of air enters a vein whilst delivering IV therapy or IV antibiotics and same goes for PICC lines of course. My understanding is that it takes a whole line of air through a PIV in order to cause harm or even death to a patient. So the tiniest air bubble of course won’t harm the patient. My question involves how PICC lines and peripheral IV access differ (if at all) in the amount of air that can be delivered through them before causing serious harm. Obviously a PICC line sits above the right atrium and deliverers the IVAB or fluid directly to the heart but doesn’t a PIV eventually lead to the right atrium too? So would there be no difference? I am only asking because there seems to be a lot of anxiety pressed on nurses regarding PICC lines that you can’t even get the tiniest amount of air in the syringe and quite frankly it scares me to death. I have been so cautious and anxious while dealing with my patients with PICCs and I’m honestly so scared that I will accidentally inject one of my patients with 2ml of air and they will have a either a PE or stroke. Sorry I’m advance for the silly question, just trying to make sense of it all as PICCs are relatively new to me! Thank you, Dee