Saturday February 23, 2008
One good practice !

Beauty of Critical Care lies in details !

To get less erroneous or in other words consistent lab results is to place a policy for procedure for drawing blood samples from indwelling lines.

If using a multi lumen (eg triple lumen catheter) line for blood drawing, one port of the line should be identified and labelled as the blood withdrawal port and used exclusively for blood drawing if possible.

Definitely, blood should not be drawn from TPN infusion and preferably not from pressor infusions to avoid the hypotensive episodes.

Another important and many time forgotten part - if line is flushed with Heparin, it should be documented in medication list (mostly call MAR in USA).