RachRn

It's an awesome job! I started in inpatient oncology and moved to outpatient infusion. It's going to be a bit overwhelming at first since you aren't familiar with the drugs and protocols at all. Don't get discouraged. You can most definitely do it if you commit and put in the work. If possible, I encourage you to look up patients the night before and look up their drugs/treatment plans the day before. Look at the individual drugs, and treatment plans as a whole. Look at the patients diagnosis. You will more quickly familiarize yourself with the drugs and treatment plans. Most importantly, read about how the drugs given, and nursing conditions when giving each drug. Doing a little prep work will not only help you, but your preceptor will greatly appreciate you taking some proactive responsibility in your training. Good luck!

1. We disconnect the line that contains the drug the patient is reacting to, and connect NS with a new primary. 2. Some nurses do use a rate of 999 ml/hr to get the med to the patient. There are certain instances where this makes sense. For instance a blood product that is monitored for the first 15 minutes at a slower rate and then increased. Or for other titrated drugs. You’re supposed to titrate them up after infusing the blood or drug for a specified amount of time. Some of these initial rates are so slow that unless you get the product to the patient first, the only thing you’re doing is observing your patient while nothing but saline is infusing. That being said, I NEVER bolus more than 12ml to get it to the patient. Our packaging on our tubing says they hold 18 ml, but when I do this with blood my eyes can clearly see the blood getting close approaching my patient at 12 ml. I err on the side of caution when doing this. For drugs with a flat rate, I really don’t see any reason to do this.