Saasy

This is going to be a silly question probably but is it possible to leave the needle in when inserting an iv catheter? I've heard it happening with old equipment but with what we have now I can't see it happening especially with safety features to stop us from getting poked.

Haha that's a great one

There was probably 600-700mls in the bag to get in 3 hours. Also I'm not familiar with diluting blood so the thought never really occurred to me and I wanted to be safe than more sorry than I already was.

Hi all!! I'm a new nurse who graduated a year ago. There have been many ups and downs and I'm still working on my confidence and hoping to keep it together day by day like most new nurses I'm sure. Any other new nurses out there with some experiences to share? I'd love to hear from all if you and your thoughts in nursing as a new nurse :)

Thanks everyone for the comments. To answer the questions posed earlier the saline backed up into the unit if blood making the volume too large to infuse under the 4 hour time frame blood is good for. I would have risked overloading him with fluid. This was a bigger problem than the pump Bottom line I should've taken charge and dealt with it rather than listening to others and it would have worked out. Lesson learned. Trust my gut from now on.

*Bump

So I work in long term care. I love where I work and all of the staff but have been thinking about a change for more experience and skills. I only graduated a year ago so I'm worried I won't be confident and require a lot of help at first as I haven't had the chance to use certain skills often. I'm also nervous I won't be able to handle or like the faster pace. Any advice to help me transition? Would being on a float team be good or bad?

Yes you're right which is why I felt so guilty because as I said in my post I should've known and figured it out. I have had plenty of opportunities with the pumps also which is why I felt ridiculous too. I guess it was partly just nerves with family there and the other nurse so insistent that just made my mind go blank. I did learn my lesson and figured out what the problem was. The main issue for me is it seemed so silly plus the blood was wasted. Ugh some days.

This was a filtered giving set with 2 spikes. We programmed it as a secondary line instead of a primary line and there was no secondary line so it drew in air and kept beeping. No harm done though but it was silly. I should've known better myself and if the senior nurse hadn't said anything it wouldn't have happened.

I should add the wrong line had nothing hooked up to it- so the error/stop messages were about air

The first time I gave a patient bloid was a few months ago and a second opportunity came about the other day so I asked a senior RN to help me get it set up. She got me to program the pump for the wrong line (I should have thought of this perhaps) causing error messages galore. Patient wasn't harmed (didn't get any blood) but a unit of blood was wasted when we tried to prime a new line thinking that was the problem and saline backed up into the bag. I feel silly and guilty about the wasted blood. Even though this has happened before on the unit I feel like I should've known the issue even with my lesser experience. Any advice would help- I'm losing sleep over this