Why still IV gtt rates on exams?

[FireStarterRN, BSN, RN]

I just took the online pharmacology test for my staffing agency. A big percentage of the questions were calculating drip rates.

I learned these 16 years ago in nursing school and have never used them since. But, they always have them on these pharmacology competancy tests. It seems dumb to test on these when there are so many more current topics that they could be covering.

I don't know why nursing schools waste time on archaic information, meanwhile many other, more current areas of nursing remain uncovered. I mean, we spent some time in first semester covering the apothecary system!

[racing-mom4, BSN, RN]

Ya just never know when those pesky pumps will go down....that is what my nursing teachers used to tell me.

I totally agree with you though.

[Adenium]

Sadly, one of my clinical instructors noted (as we were vociferously complaining about the low utility factor in learning gtt rate calcs) that one of the bigger local hospitals does indeed run out of pumps. Their nurses do have to sit there and count drips on occasion.

I guess it's a good thing to learn, but we've now been tested on them multiple times this year. And yet in clinical practice, we'd probably forget before we'd ever have to put it to use. The calculation seems like something you should learn once, and then you should just know where to put your fingers on the info if you ever need it. After all, if you don't do something on a regular basis wouldn't you check before going ahead and trying it, anyway?

[StNeotser, ASN, RN]

I dunno.

I remember at school only five years ago calculating grains along with American and metric measurements too.

I worried if I'd ever see these bloody grains, and luckily I haven't.

[pagandeva2000, LPN]

I hate it also, and also did a recent on line test that was at least 15% drip rates that for a moment, I totally blanked out and had to think. In addition converting from Apocraphry (I know this is a typo) to metric is a pain in the butt as well. Keep forgetting what a dram= to...

[Nightcrawler, BSN, RN]

I dunno.

I remember at school only five years ago calculating grains along with American and metric measurements too.

I worried if I'd ever see these bloody grains, and luckily I haven't.

AHHH, but I have had docs that for some reason or other would write some dosages in grains, leaving me (and pharmacy) to do the conversion. They either wrote it by habit, or were just testing us

[Multicollinearity, BSN, RN]

Very recently, I saw an ER with patients boarded in the halls because they were out of rooms. They were out of IV pumps for the patients in the hallways, and the nurses were calculating drip rates.

[Woodenpug, BSN]

It seems hard to let go of stuff. People will always give some sort of justification. The grain thing is useful for ASA, pharmacy won't let them get away with take two aspirin and the docs are never sure what mg is in stock (it changes). Still why? All through LVN school we could not use calculators b/c "what if your battery died? - I'd get another - what if there were none? - I'd have worse problems than those calculations." The BSN program allowed calculators. I think in another decade drip calculations will go away, if it follows the usual slow pattern of nurse education.

[Murse901, MSN, RN]

I've only been a nurse for 2 1/2 years and I've had to do manual drip rates at least a dozen times, and have calculated grains to mg at least 3 times as often.

You will not always have pumps, and you will not always have orders in mg.

[SusanKathleen, RN]

I'm a student, passing meds now, and must calculate drip rates all the time. This hospital doesn't use pumps except in critical care units.

[shodobe]

IMHO, IV pumps should only be used for critical meds and not for everyday IV infusions. Why? It seems most if not all floor nurses rely on these pumps way too much. I would say that at least 75% of patients sent to me to the OR have non-functioning IVs. This is due to the fact that newer nurses over the past 5 years or more think this is the appropriate way to give IVs. The companies such as Baxter and others have convinced menagement this the best way to give patient care. The time wasted by anesthesia and OR staff to restart these non-working IVs can amount to anywhere from a few minutes to much more. If you are trying to stay on schedule this can really screw things up. Calculating the drips out is an important aspect of patient care, especially if you are supposed to take them off of the pump an hour or so before heading off to surgery. This also would make your preop checklist accurate and true when it comes to ticking off the area that shows you have sent a patient to surgery with a PATENT running IV.

[ZooMommyRN, ADN, RN]

If you ever find yourself in hurricaine land you'll use them, we had 6 come thru over 2 seasons and generators can only run so much, critical meds get the juice first, IVF ran the old fashioned way, not to mention ours is so small that a full house alots 1 pump to room and ICU gets priority to snag ours so it's possible to have to run IVF w/o a pump when there's no disaster going on.