she tried to access mediport, it was really a pacer

Nurses General Nursing

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nurse at work told me this horror story today,( she works per diem at another facility), was working this weekend in acute care, was called off the floor to try to access a mediport, after this other nurse tried 3 times. on arrival, she finds it wasn't a mediport at all, but a pacemaker. this other nurse had poked it with the huber 3 times, the guy was bleeding all over, apparently in critical care now. this guy never even had a mediport. Can you believe tis incompetence??!!

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Specializes in Surgical/Telemetry.

Yikes!

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Specializes in Education, FP, LNC, Forensics, ED, OB.

In all my years of nursing, I have NEVER seen this happen.

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The first 30 years I was a nurse there were IV teams and stuff like this never happened. Managment had to get rid of them as a cost cutting measure. Now we got infections everywhere and terrible mistakes like this. You can't absolve the nurses of negligence in this cases but the situation smacks of lack of proper training.

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I don't think this has anythig to do with IV teams or not. It is more one nurse, who was incompetent.

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Specializes in Education, FP, LNC, Forensics, ED, OB.

I have to agree with holly. This is blatant incompetence.

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How could she even begin to confuse the two?

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Specializes in LDRP.

Hello, we have to have an order to access portacaths. Did a clueless doctor write an order to access a portacath, not knowing hte pt didn't have one?

Didn't the nurse know enough about her pt to know he had a pacer?That he didn't have a portacath? Most people have a good legitatmate reason for having a portacath, one that the nurse/doctor should have known about.

I also REALLY hope this wasn't a telemetry floor, -where the nurse coujld have s0een on the telemetry that there was a pacer.

In my whole 7 months on the floor, I've accessed one portacath. No way would I have confused it with a pacer. Not even close!

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Well, a pacer and a port are sometimes in similar locations and both usually appear as a bump under the skin.

I suppose it might be easy to look at them and make the error. However, before trying to access something, the nurse should have checked the patient record to see if the patient had a port, or any other device.

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Wow. Why did she think this patient had a mediport to start with? Did she not review his history? Obvious lack of knowledge.

How to access mediports is part of a yearly skill inservice started at my facility.

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the first thing the other nurse (the smart nurse) did was check the chart for an order, of course there wasn't one. I guess the guy just had an order for iv fluids and stupid nurse just started poking away.

.

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Specializes in Psych, Peds, LTC, Corrections.

It is sad that there are incompetent nurses caring for those that are ill. Very sad. I hope for the best for this patient.

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