Programming an IV pump so that 100 percent of every medication, including antibiotics is a numbers game. The 25 questions in this book force nurses to think about and calculate the amount to program into an IV pump to give the entire dose of antibiotics or other essential IV medication.
The IV pump is unlikely to be pre-programmed to clear the IV tubing of medication. Thinking nurses must program the IV pump themselves. Nurses must over-ride the pumps supposedly "safe" numbers or "limits" to save the patients life.
Registered Nurses will use the "Holt Rules" for calculating the "volume to infuse" to program into the IV pump which will give patients a much better chance of surviving their infection.
This book is a companion to Holt's CEU course on Intravenous Medication Mistakes.
Antibiotic medication mistakes focusses on the individual nurse, and how he or she needs to make the cognitive leap to realize that many RNs have not been taught the fundamentals of clearing antibiotics from IV tubing. One RN at a time, we must all learn to give full doses of antibiotics.
The final three questions are a case study in how patients develop multi drug resistant organisms due to most RNs only giving half a dose of antibiotic.
One of the reasons that many people have multi drug resistant organisms (MDRO) such as:
VTE – Vancomycin resistant Enterococcus
MRSA – Methicillin resistant staph aureus
CRE – Carbapenim Resistant Enterobacteria
Is because many RNs are only giving a partial dose of antibiotics. In fact, many nurses give less than half a dose of IV antibiotics.
