NICUJOE

In my unit, we don't prep the port at all--neither alcohol nor betadine. We just draw back 1-2 mLs of hep/blood and then draw our ABG sample. However, our RTs do a great deal of sampling from those lines as well. I just keep the line sterile and don't let it touch anything. That's how I was taught, though. As usual, however, there are always errors in practice and I've witnessed them. On the other hand, we do not have a lot of infected UACs or PALs. Guess it kinda varies everywhere with different schools of thought.