Aurea

David, Thank you for sharing your experience. Our nurses are using a variety of needles depending on patient size and port placement. I am sure some are choosing to go too large, however, on the whole I would say that is not a widespread problem as the most common used is 19mm (20G) in the adult population. I have seen that most do not support the wings and have been exploring why that is. As far as needle brand, they have just finished trialing several brands, choosing the one that was the most comfortable for the patients and users found easy to use. They landed on Bard PowerLoc.

Londonflo, Thank you for reaching out and asking questions. I am not in sales. Our hospital system has a department that specializes in realizing the ideas and solving the problems our team members face and I am a part of that team. We do everything from create devices, to institutional use only solutions, workflow, culture, and IT. If we cannot find a solution or make a solution, we connect them to those who can. In this instance, a nurse from one of our vascular access teams came to me wanting to address the securement issues she is seeing in our inpatient population. While some are careful to not block the insertion site, others are struggling to keep it in place without doing so. I am reaching out to see if this is a problem with our health system, a problem regionally, or one that encompasses a more wide spread area, what are their solutions, and where are their challenges. In addition to posting on nursing forums, I have also reached out to organizations like ONS, Moffitt, etc.

Hello, The oncology nurses within my hospital system have been facing some challenges with securing port safety needles. The safety aspect engages and begins to dislodge, putting patients at risk of infiltration. This problem is mostly seen in patients who are accessed for more than short term use and the pediatric population who tend to be more active during infusion. With the increased usage of implanted ports in the general patient population in the past few years, we are seeing more challenges. They are securing using Steri-Strips, however, this blocks visibility of the insertion site. Is anyone else experiencing these issues? What are your solutions? Challenges?