Saturday, December 6, 2008

Blister pack panic


OSHA and JACHO have conspired again to hinder the care of patients in the name of more bureaucratic meddling. When a trauma patient comes in, the first thing everyone does is put on goves and a gown. As the patient is getting his primary survey at least one large bore IV goes in to help get meds, fluid blood etc. Here is the problem. It was hard enough to get the old IV catheters out of the plastic bubble wrap they were in. They had a little part that you could peel off but with gloves on it was impossible. So you just twisted the whole thing and the catheter would pop out. But that little bit of sabotage was not enough. We now have to use these special pre-bubble wrapped packs that has a latex free touriquet, aseptic swab stick, guaze, and finally the catheter. Not only is the whole thing in blister wrap, but each component is seperately blister wraped. There is no way you can open these things with gloves on. So, now you have to make sure that you tie up a whole person whose sole job is to open the stuff instead of helping the patient. This is in addition to the other person whose sole job is to stand there and document. They are documenting that you used the JACHO and OSHA approved IV start kit of course.

8 comments:

Andrew_M_Garland said...

So, a person without gloves is opening the double-packed, aseptic, approved devices, packed that way to avoid the bacteria on the non-gloved hand.

Reform will only come when an entreprenurial actor starts doing stand-up medical comedy.

SeaSpray said...

What Andrew said!

Medical comedy routine is an AWESOME idea! A picture is worth a thousand words.

Yeah... that would be a GREAT SNL skit!!! LOL!

What better way to bring attention to the insanity of these regulations??!

SeaSpray said...

Hi Throckmorton - Inspired by your formulas, I attempted to do the same with my recent lab debacle. Math isn't my strong suit though. :)

SnowLite said...
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SeaSpray said...
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SeaSpray said...
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SeaSpray said...

Hi-if you haven't already seen it - Dr Rob (on my side bar and I am sure googleable)has an interesting post up about docs in a twittering discussion about EMR's (he posts discussion) then goes on to discuss EMR's and how he has used one for 12 years. Interesting.

Also, WhiteCoat has a post up about no docs practicing in Illinois as of Jan 1st, which I can't imagine being allowed to happen.. but what are they waiting for?

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