Patient Safety News
April 2019
Change in Procedure for IV Starts
Nursing will be starting IVs when patients arrive in the Pre-Op area, rather than right before going into the OR.
They will attempt to start the IV twice, before alerting the Anesthesia team to either try to start the IV again, or determine whether the patient will receive an IV in the OR.
New Code Stroke Timeout Protocol
A new Code Stroke Timeout process has been established, and is available on the PSQI SharePoint site under Anesthesia Resources.
Please take the time to familiarize yourself with the new protocol.
**Important Infection Control Notice**
We are moving to actively improve our compliance with the current infection control guidelines by introducing claves to our stopcocks.
Until new products with built-in claves are evaluated, purchased and procured, we will be adding claves to our double stopcocks in the precare areas, and on the IV setup in the OR. We will also be evaluating some 5-gang stopcocks for use with claves, but for now we will not be adding them to the 5-gangs.
As a reminder, we should be alcohol swabbing every injection port prior to medication administration, except between a rapid succession of medications (during induction, for example).
**Important Reminder**
It is hospital policy that unused blood products should be returned to the blood bank within 20 minutes of issue.
Please make every effort to return blood products within this 20 minute window to avoid wasting these resources!
