Re: blood return

[Denise Macklin]

Blood return will always be an issue that is difficult to be black and white on.  However, up to 5% of all central venous catheters are placed so that pinch of is a problem.  80% of these catheters will fracture.  In addition there are catheters that ar e placed incorrectly.  As nurses it is important to assess the situation but if there is no blood return and you proceed you are taking a great amount of risk on if something does go wrong.  That is why knowing the patient is so important.  I proceeded much differently in the oncology office than the inpatient setting.  We saw patients very regularly and had the initial testing done to find out what was causing the problem.  If identified then we proceeded.  The problem these days is nurses want a rule for everything.  Nursing assessment and judgment can not be more important than with infusion therapy.  We will never get to a point where everything is written down.  If this ever happened then nursing judgement would no longer be needed and they would teach techs to do the work.    Denise  ----- Original Message ----- From: Alma Kooistra To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2006 9:47 AM Subject: RE: blood return I agree.......and find myself falling solidly on the side of the INS Standards.  Sure, the Standards will be modified in the future, but if we throw them out as a guideline for our P/Ps, we shoot ourselves in the foot.  They are the best we have. I would like to express sincere thanks to those who took time and effort to put them together, and encourage those of you with other ideas to continue to bring them forward, provide evidence for the changes you believe need to be made, and allow those with intellect and experience to review your evidence.  Then they can (again) make the hard choice on what should/should not be included in the document. Alma Kooistra RN, CRNI ----Original Message Follows---- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: blood return Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 07:20:55 -0400 I find the debate interesting but --- also feel the participants are so passionate about their opinions that I began to imageine them wearing boxing golves.......... Jose