Hi all,
I am wondering about infection/sepsis risk from IV insertions. I always clean the site, avoid palpating after cleaning and if I need to try again I of course get a new catheter. For some reason today when starting an IV on a patient who was a hard stick I inserted, did not get blood return at first and wanted to withdraw the needle a little bit to re-insert at a slightly different angle (with IV still under the skin) but accidentally removed the needle completely and then re-inserted with success. I am now paranoid that by essentially inserting a catheter that had already poked through the skin to cannulate the patient's vein that I could introduce bacteria into the patient's blood stream. I did some research and sepsis from PIVs is pretty rare but still so worried. any expert opinions? I will make sure this never happens again.