tmhop

Here's a good starting place for foods high in potassium. http://foodshighinpotassium.com/ To keep sodium low, stick to healthy and nonprocessed foods such as fruits, veggies, whole grains. Some ideas for protein sources are meat, beans, greek yogurt, nuts.

Here are some websites that might help. You could enter in the foods and try different things until you find the combination you need to get the right nutriennts. http://www.thedailyplate.com/ http://nutritiondata.self.com/

The patient could develop air embolism if air entered the catheter. The other possibility is that blood could come out of the catheter that was open. It depends on the differences in pressure, as to whether air would go in, or blood would flow out.

Are the nurses using a skin prep? If that isn't allowed to completely dry before putting the dressing on, that could be causing skin irritation as well. Also, are the nurses stretching the dressing when applying it? That can also cause skin irritation. Here's a link that has some good info: http://tinyurl.com/tegaderminfo2010

A few questions: 1. Why do you have two needleless connectors on? Could you connect the extension tubing directly to the PICC hub, and just have a needleless connector on the extension tubing? The purpose of the needleless connector is to facilitate intermittent infusion, so it seems like the needleless connector on the PICC line could be eliminated. 2. Why were you advised to change needleless connectors daily? Can you just do the needleless connector change with the extension tubing change? /Tess Hopkins

Some things that could help to give the potassium as safely as possible: -Use the smallest possible catheter in the largest possible vein. -The more diluted the potassium is, the less irritation will occur. For example, if the potassium is mixed in 100mL of fluid, that would be more irritating than if it is mixed in 1000mL (1 liter) of fluid. (If the patient can tolerate a higher fluid volume.) /Tess M. Hopkins

The Standards of Practice by INS (Infusion Nurses Society) 66.III.B state that ports should not be used for therapeutic phlebotomy. /Tess M. Hopkins