atlnurse7

IDK how it would be wrong route, my hospitals critical care nephrologist thought it was brilliant and my patients redraw labs weren’t impacted negatively. It raised her potassium to within normal limits as to be expected. it would be wrong route if I was putting it to a peripheral and the order was for a central line. If it’s for a central line you should have a filter on it either way. So saying it filters out some of the potassium wouldn’t make much sense. putting a filter on the end of a peripheral is still given through an IV, and if that’s the ordered route, then you’re still administering correctly.

Hi all I wanted to gather a place where we can potentially exchange report sheet templates and ICU brains that help us during our shifts. ?

Does anyone here get their patient assignment before 7am? I remember in nursing school always being told that we could (in the future as nurses) come onto the unit early and look up info about your patient before 7am at shift change. But that this was always optional and not required at work places. At my current job, I don’t get my patient assignment til 7am that morning right before I go to get hand off. Not sure if that’s abnormal or not but I would love to have an opportunity to see something’s about my patient before receiving report about them. Just saying :)

I honestly have no idea how exactly the filter helped. I didn’t slow the infusion rate down, I followed my med orders precisely. I do wanna know why it worked too! But just know it does

My preceptor is the one who told me to do IV potassium. I wanted to confirm with her before doing it, my preceptor didn’t hesitate. Given the patient, her age and history, there was no reason not to. I’m not going to force a patient to do something they don’t want to do after I attempt to educate and they still refuse.

Our protocol for replacement in our PRN orders includes both IV and PO. Plus if she refuses PO, I can’t make her take it LOL. It went fine and her IV was still beautifully patent without any complications or pain

Should’ve clarified. Use a filter when administering IV potassium via PIV

I found a great hack for administering Potassium through a PIV! I had a DKA patient yesterday who was off her insulin drip and alert and oriented x 4. I tried to give her PO potassium but she declined and said she rather have IV instead. I warned her it would hurt, and she said okay anyways. I primed my line and threw a filter on it, and it didn’t burn or hurt her at all. Line was still patent with a good blood return and a flush about 20 min after the potassium had finished infusing.

Nope. We get ours from the supply room. Med room is strictly the omnicell

I really appreciate all of your comments and bringing different perspectives to my attention. I guess I never thought to bring a syringe into the med room with me, draw up what needs to be wasted, waste it and have another nurse watch me do it. Maybe it’s because I’m a new nurse but I’m not sure why I never thought of that til now. I feel like that’s actually a better idea to be honest. I really appreciate all of your perspectives and plan on taking this info into consideration moving forward and wasting meds! thank you all very much. I hope I can be a better nurse with the help of strangers like y’all

I totally see what you’re saying.

Bucket is sealed, you can only drop things in. The med room is only accessible by nurses and pharmacists that have a badge or know the code depending on the unit

If there is limited IV access. Some places operate differently and maybe they couldn’t get another stick. In a perfect world, my preceptor would have probably come in and attempted to start another IV on him or her, which she normally can do even on people with bad veins.

You have the option to waste now or waste later. Another nurse has to be in there with you to scan his or her finger print as a witness to you wasting it. You can say waste later after you go to the bedside and draw it up. Go back to the omnicell, log in. Select your patient and the drug you just gave, say waste. It makes someone else use their finger print and type their password in. Then you select how much you wasted, for example if I gave 50mcg/1mL that was a 100mcg/2mL bottle I would say I wasted 50mcg into the blue bucket bc I administered 1/2 the vial since that’s what was ordered for my patient. Say it is a pill even and the patient is ordered 2.5mg and the drug is a 5mg tablet. After I scan the med at the bedside, I manually entire 2.5mg since I scanned a 5mg tablet. I put the pill in the pill splitter and put 2.5mg in the drug wrapper and give the other half to my patient. I go back into the med room with another nurse as my witness, I select the patient, select waste, select the medication. It asks for another nurse/pharmacist/supervisors witness. They scan their finger print and enter their password and then a prompt comes up with options and I select administered half of the tablet as per ordered, another prompt to ask what I did with the other tablet and I select placed unused tablet in blue bin. Then I put it in the blue bin

we don’t have an area like that at my hospital. We are supposed to draw up the medication at the bedside. I only draw up what is needed from the vial. In our little med room that has our omnicell, there is a blue bucket for the drugs that we are supposed to waste. Rooms also have similar buckets for our IV drips, etc for us to put them in when they are done. But we are supposed to draw them up at the bedside.