...or I'd never hear the end of it from my students!
I worked a floor that is a "latex free" floor. I hate working that floor.
It's the nitrile gloves. The damn things are "thick" compared to ordinary and common latex gloves. I've been lucky thus far and haven't developed any sort of reaction to the latex.
So, as I was doing the preliminary readying of the patient, he asked me if I could take a look at the arm that wasn't quite as good for drawing blood.
"This side has been picked on all the time and it's better for what you do, but could you look at the other one anyway, just in case?"
His voice held a plaintive note. And, it never hurts to look.
He had an antecubital. It was small, and definitely not a choice for an IV site, but for a draw? Piece o' cake.
He needed a coag, chemistries, and a CBC. No problem. I pulled out a hub and a 23 gauge butterfly and with little or no effort, saw a flash followed by a steady draw.
The coag filled rapidly in spite of the smaller gauge needle.
And then the damn gloves made their presence known. I can't feel anything properly in the things.
I dislodged the coag tube, and prepared to insert the chemistry tube.
And yanked the needle right out of the guy's arm.
I haven't done that since I was a rookie.
I spent the next 20 minutes coaxing blood into peds tubes via capillary puncture.
My students would have loved it. They'd have talked about it for weeks.
Thank God the baby vamps don't work on weekends.
5 comments:
whoopsie!
Dumb question.... why the different gloves for that floor?
Not a dumb question at all, Trace!
One of the nurses on that floor has such a severe allergy to latex that she can't be near anything latex. She goes into anaphylactic shock and has come close to dying on more than one occasion, so the gloves are an absolute no on that floor.
Well Kate you know it wasn't anything to do with your abilities! It must feel a lot different using the other gloves.
I haven't worked since all the furor over latex. Do the nitrile gloves fit any better? It meant an extra charge for the patient, but I usually grabbed a sterile pair of gloves because they didn't make the generic latex small enough. I'd have pulled a lot of IVs out while I was trying to get the tape off my glove and pulled the whole darn glove off because it was so big.
Flo - the nitrile gloves seem to fit a lot smaller, but that's because there is little or no 'give' to them. You must have tiny hands; one of my students did, too, and even the extra small latex gloves were too big for her.
On this particular floor, we can't even use sterile gloves because most of them are latex, or part latex. Makes it difficult for sterile procedures on the floor. For example, when doing a blood culture, we have to just scrub the nitrile gloves with the cloraprepp or iodine, whichever is being used, and hope that the sterile field will be good enough. Makes us think - we will treat the gloves, and then try hard not to touch the sterile area even though the glove is technically sterile. Unfortunately, sometimes you still have to touch the vein before the stick, especially when you're training the BV's.
But far better to err on the side of caution when the other side of the coin could mean the loss of life.
Post a Comment