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Keywords

hospital-acquired infection, bloodstream infection

Disciplines

Nursing

Description

Hospitalized patients are treated for the illness that brought them in. However, how many times have you heard of your patients being treated for a hospital-acquired infection, such as a bloodstream infection, or have had a patient lose their IV very quickly? Every patient that comes into the hospital to be treated gets an IV catheter placed and improper care, such as not capping and clamping your lines, can result in infections in the blood stream, sepsis, clotted lines, and the IV becoming infiltrated. If we can get nurses in the habit of capping and clamping every IV catheter after use, we can help prevent these extra illness patients keep seeing and decrease hospitalization and length of stay. Flushing and clamping an IV line helps maintain patency of an IV catheter when it is not in use. Research has shown that flushing the IV with at least 10ml of normal saline is vital in preventing malfunction (Gossens, 2015). The use of a disinfecting cap, according to Hou et al. (2023), has a reduction of infection by 73%, along with a 0.5-day reduction in length of hospital stay. To promote the use of capping and clamping IVs, we proposed the use of visual aid reminders, similarly to what has been done for handwashing (Wearn et al., 2015). According to this study, the use of visual aid reminders increased compliance in handwashing, thus supporting the possibility of visual aids in increasing compliance in capping and clamping IVs.

Publication Date

5-2025

Comments

Nurses Week at Corewell Health William Beaumont University Hospital, Royal Oak, MI, May 6-12, 2025.

Using Visual Aids to Increase Compliance of Capping and Clamping IVs

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