Sterile Water for Enteral Feeding Tubes?

[med_geek]

Hi all, I have a question about what type of water you use for flushing and administering meds via NG/OG tubes. At the ICU in the hospital I am currently at, we are required to use sterile water ONLY. However, the rest of the hospital uses regular tap water. The theory is that critical care patients are often immunocompromised and so have a higher risk of acquiring an infection from tap water than other patients. I find it much easier to dissolve crushed meds in warm water (which is impossible when using sterile water). I have been looking into nursing journals for research, but I was curious as to what you do on your units.

Thank you in advance!

[RachelP_CRNA2B, BSN, RN]

We use sterile water in our open heart/transplant unit.

[MunoRN, RN]

In the vast majority of patients, there's no harm in regular tap water, the problem is that for a small sub-population of critically ill patients the pathogens commonly present in tap water, that our digestive tract normally has no problem dealing with, can be deadly. There's no simple way of identifying who these vulnerable patients are, so we can either go through the time consuming process of determining who these specific patients are, or just use it for everyone, which makes more sense to me.