Standard practice for arterial line pulls

Specialties Cardiac

Published

I'm trying to collect info on how many practice line pulls are considered adequate to consider someone competent to do them on their own. Our cath Recovery requires 10 but this is not possible for our new ICU staff based on pt volume and staffing I'm wondering what other hospitals are doing.

Specializes in ICU.

Our post-cath unit has us document 12 pulls, but I was "off orientation" by pull 5 or 6. I think we go more by the see one, do one, teach one mentality.

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I'll second the 'no thanks' to a fem-stop. Too frequent hematoma development = ick.

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Specializes in Neurosciences, cardiac, critical care.

Hate fem-stop. We rarely ever use it.... If you look at studies it has higher rates of almost every complication. Manual pressure isn't THAT inconvenient.

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i suggest atleast 30mins to an hour manual pressure. if ur using a fem-stop, put atleast 15mins of pressure after placement of the fem-stop.

i always make sure that the BP is not that high first before pulling the sheath. i usually press an inch proxmal to the puncture site.

try to have someone with you on ur first time just in case the fountain of blood appears. lol

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