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??!!

Just out of curiousity,,......how long had this nurse worked there(the one who "decided " to access a pacer with a big ole huber needle)???

If this nurse felt comfy enough to do something that assinine...chances are she had been there awhile.This nurse obviously ( and sadly) wasnt competent in either having a/v pacer patients nor portacaths.I doubt the doc wouldve ordered the "port" accessed anyway (if he'd had one) bc ...that is a chemo patients lifeline...and it doesnt sound like this .....was an oncology nurse.(lol)....OMG...poor poor patient. :rotfl:

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Was the patient unable to tell her it wasn't a portacath? This is so sad that happened to him.

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Specializes in MICU.

:uhoh21: Ouch. In our instution, you have to be certified to access those ports.

On a side note, I was taking care of a pt one day. We had a chest xray done to verify line placement for a line from an outside hosp, and the doc & I are looking @ the film... what do I see? "What the hell is that?!?! A pacemaker??" The doc is like, "Oh, yeah." The day nurse never mentioned this info, the monitor was not set up for a paced pt, and it wasn't even on the flowsheet! EEEKKK!

Peace,

Sharon

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What a mess! Sure hope this man survives.

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Specializes in Utilization Management.

OMG, I'm gonna have the word "Pacer" tattooed over mine. Not only is it small, but it's on the "wrong" side of my chest! :uhoh21:

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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.

Im lucky at the hospital I am a patient at we still have an IV team

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my dad has a med-port and an indwelling pain pump with a well that is filled with a needle. It would be easy for someone with little experieince to not know which is which. Not that that helped this poor guy. The real problem is noone was available who knew how to care for the patient appropriately--yet another consequence of too little staff with too little experience.:imbar

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my dad has a med-port and an indwelling pain pump with a well that is filled with a needle. It would be easy for someone with little experieince to not know which is which. Not that that helped this poor guy. The real problem is noone was available who knew how to care for the patient appropriately--yet another consequence of too little staff with too little experience.:imbar

Exactly. Everyone makes mistakes that seem really horrible, incompetent, and negligent from the outside in. But if this was a case of an inexperienced person, they could have been set up to fail by the hospital from the get-go, with the way nurses are pushed off orientation before they feel ready and without proper training, and the way so many nurses eat their young and punish people who ask "stupid" questions.

I'm not saying that's what happened, b/c I don't know. But none of us know. Obviously a root cause analysis needs to be done, so that no one else repeats the same mistake.

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Specializes in Oncology/Haemetology/HIV.

I have seen worse.

In one facility that I have worked, in the ER on two separate occasions, there were attempts to draw blood from a nonaccessed port, using a REGULAR needle (not a non-coring Huber). The ports were of course, damaged beyond repair after this and both patients bled alot.

There are a lot of different ports out there, of different sizes - some singles and some doubles. They occasionally flip on their side or can be deep. But could they not feel the rubber bubble?

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Specializes in ICUs, Tele, etc..
Was the patient unable to tell her it wasn't a portacath? This is so sad that happened to him.

This is what I was wondering, was the patient unconscious? I mean if a person has a pacemaker, they pretty much are aware of it. So prolly he was out cold.

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ERNurse752

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Join Date: Oct 2001

Location: In my happy place

Posts: 1,277 Re: she tried to access mediport, it was really a pacer

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Quote:

Originally Posted by kidsRNkathy

my dad has a med-port and an indwelling pain pump with a well that is filled with a needle. It would be easy for someone with little experieince to not know which is which. Not that that helped this poor guy. The real problem is noone was available who knew how to care for the patient appropriately--yet another consequence of too little staff with too little experience.

Exactly. Everyone makes mistakes that seem really horrible, incompetent, and negligent from the outside in. But if this was a case of an inexperienced person, they could have been set up to fail by the hospital from the get-go, with the way nurses are pushed off orientation before they feel ready and without proper training, and the way so many nurses eat their young and punish people who ask "stupid" questions.

That is an excellent point.Hospitals want new grads...they are cheaper and unfortunately...inexperienced. With few experienced nurses left to properly orientate them....they are set up for failure.It is a loose -loose situation

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But a pacer is much larger than a portacath, where a pacer is likely to be square, the portacath is circular and about the size of a quarter at best. Not knowing if the patient has a pacer or a port, it is always better to insert a peripheral than accessing anything. The worst thing that can happen is that you stuck the patient unecessarily, but it's not as risky as what this nurse did. You can always remove the peripheral and access the port once verified. My first impulse if I see something like that would be to assume that it's a pacer, then dig in the charts for more info. Or ask the family if they're present.

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