Automated IV Pumps
Automated IV Pumps
An automated IV pumps are an electronic medical device that delivers fluids such as medication and nutrients in controlled amounts into a patient’s body. The devices are operated by a trained user who programs the duration and rate of fluid deliver into the patient through an inbuilt software interface. The pumps are widely used in nursing homes, hospitals and homes. The IV pumps are very essential in a healthcare setting such as a hospital and without them, it would be difficult for nurses to effectively accomplish their daily responsibilities. It is worth noting that the automatic IV pumps are suitable for all patients in need of administration of IV fluids since they ensure that the right amount of fluid of nutritional medicine gets to patients IV correctly.
The IV pumps were first introduced 30 years ago. The devices were manually operated primarily for cardiovascular system and matters relating to nutrition. Currently, they have evolved over time into therapy-specified sophisticated devices. The earlier pumps required the user to calculate infusion rate manually then put this rate into the pump, after which the intelligent pumps calculate the rate of infusion. The recent pump is a refreshment of the old approved devices with new infusion updates such as intelligent software, interoperability features, and wireless capabilities. Most of these changes do not bring significant hardware advances. This technology is used to deliver medications and nutrients among other fluids to a wide range of patients, for instance, diabetic people who require administration of insulin and patients having nutrients deficiencies. Medication errors related to the intravenous infusion (IV) present the most harmful capability. According to a study of pediatric patients, IV medications were identified with 54% of possible adverse drug events and 60% of the events were related to IV therapy. In the United States, the medications for IV were associated with medical errors with a 56% rate (Wolf & Hughes, 2019).
There are several benefits of the automated or the innovative pump. First is that it reduces medication errors in the rate fluid administration, quantity, and duration. The IV pumps are used to administer the correct dosage of fluids as overdosing could lead to severe consequences to the patient. Therefore, IV pumps offer a safe and controlled way for the administration of intravenous fluid. Secondly, the pump enhances the quality of care for the patients in hospitals and clinics since medication errors are highly reduced. Third, the pumps are customizable; they are not static devices. They can be customized to fit patients’ needs during the fluid administration time. This can play a crucial role in ICCU and ICU settings to save patients’ lives. Almost all health practitioners and nurses undergo stressful situations in times of emergency; hence it will be helpful to use intelligent IV pumps that could adapt to various circumstances and places in hospitals (Wolf & Hughes, 2019). The use of this device will allow the nurse to use it even in a traditional setting and provide flexibility in creating an increased number of patients with accuracy and ease.
The fourth benefit is that some intelligent IV pumps can be used to administer anesthesia drugs. Most of the pumps have a reconfiguration option from a general-purpose mode to and can be configured easily by a trained professional to administer anesthesia drugs. Fifth is that the automated IV pump has features for use in an operation theatre and it can accurately meet the various needs of nurses and physicians while treating a patient in diverse settings. The user can select a unique setting in the theatre and modify the alarms and dose alerts. In the case of Drug infusion used in PACU, nurses can unplug the power code to reset to general-purpose mode (Wolf & Hughes, 2019). This as a result enhances the healthcare services patients receive in the hospitals.
The following measure should be made to get these positive outcomes since the pumps are frequently used in critical fluid administration, such as insulin, anesthesia drugs, nutrition drugs, hormones, antibiotics, pain relievers, and chemotherapy drugs. The pumps have been equipped with safety features due to high-risk medications and pump failures. The safety features include alarms or alerts intended to be activated in an instance of a problem. For example, some pumps are designed to alert in air presence or when a blocking is detected in the tubing that delivers the fluids to the patient (Ray & Thapa, 2018). The current intelligent pumps can give an alert in case of adverse effect of drug interaction or when the user has set parameters beyond the safety limits.
Over the years, there has been a rise of some risks that have resulted in the attention of the FDA. These issues are likely to compromise the safeties of the external intelligent infusion pump usage, which can lead to missed treatments, under or over infusion, and delayed therapies. Though some of the events reported are concerning the user error, most of the events are due to engineering and design of the device which can either contribute to an error by the user or create problems themselves without the user participation. Most cases have been reported due to defects in software, mechanical failures, user interface issues, and electrical failures (Ray & Thapa, 2018).
There are three steps or ways that can be used to minimize these risks. First is to increase user awareness through teaching the users about equipment handling, user interface issues, and possibilities of a defect in the pump. Secondly, the user can proactively facilitate improvements on the device by reporting the issues that may be present or have likely occurred in its operation. In case of a concern, the equipment should be run on tests before it is used. Lastly, guidelines on how to use, handle and test the device should be properly documented in manuals and provided to users so that they can know how to handle the pumps. This will prevent possible risks by appropriately showing the users how to properly handle a risk when it happens. There are measures that the FDA is taking to improve on the safety of the pump and as well, it is developing some strategies to reduce risks on the smart pump device. The department is also developing effective ways to report the problem to them in case of an emergency in order to minimize the adverse effects when using automated IV pumps (Amarante et al., 2019).
The interdisciplinary team caring for the patient includes the nurse, clinician, anesthesiologist, and physician. To start, the anesthesiologist is responsible for carrying out the anesthesia treatment on the patient while the nurse is the caregiver that has been given the orders from the physician to carry out the procedure of aiding the patient to recovery. On the other hand, the clinician is responsible for determining the patients’ problems, dosing the patient, and giving keystrokes for the programming of care of a patient while the physician is the expert responsible for prescribing and directing the drug’s prescription.
The role of the nurse as an interdisciplinary team involves changing the patient’s IV lines. The changing of lines is done according to the patient’s needs and the automated IV pumps are used to aid in feeding the change and saving time for the nurse to cater for several patients and handle other essential duties. One of the common problems is the change in management. Change is constant and needs to be managed appropriately to prevent risk. Changes are facilitated to positive results through communication. There is a need to appropriately handle the diverse stages of change, including denial, emotional, hope, and commitment (Joint Commission, 2019).
A nurse should enroll in a benchmarking study to be able to develop evidence-based clinical guidelines as a way of achieving and improving quality of care consistency. It is important for the nurses to properly understand the nursing management of the Automatic IV pumps so that they can effectively use them to accomplish their duties. They should ensure that they validate the order of the fluid to be administered, the doses, and the pump programming for medication that needs high alerts (Joint Commission, 2019). Afterward, the nurse should then change the lines of the IV fluid administration according to the patient’s needs.
The patient needs to be educated on when the pump can be unplugged. The patient must ensure that no one else touched the pump other than the caregiver assigned to it, for instance, a nurse. In case of an alarm, a patients should call the nurse to check on the pump and fix the problem. If the patient is uncommunicable, a family member should stay with the patient. The information will be taught face to face to ensure its well understood (Joint Commission, 2019). Afterward, the patient can take a questionnaire on the information taught to ensure teaching was effective.
In conclusion, any effective care of patients despite the area of treatment will require accurate drug administration. If there is a need for administering IV fluids, then automatic IV pumps are safer to use than manual pumps. Though the impact of the automated IV pump is yet to be measured on reducing the errors in fluid administration, the available data is pleasing, and there may be a significant drop in IV medication errors in its usage. The article by Melton et al. titled, “Smart pumps improve medication safety but increase alert burden in neonatal care” and the article by Bacon and Hoffman titled, “System-Level Patient Safety Practices That Aim to Reduce Medication Errors Associated with Infusion Pumps: An Evidence Review” are additional resources that discusses more about IV pump and how they can enhance quality of care by reducing medication errors. These articles can be reviewed to provide more illustration about this important technology in healthcare.
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AUTOMATIC IV PUMP 7
References
Amarante, L. M., Newport, J., Mitchell, M., Wilson, J., & Laubach, M. (2019). An open-source syringe pump controller for fluid delivery of multiple volumes. eneuro, 6(5).
Joint Commission. (2019). National Patient Safety Goals [Internet]. 2019.
Lehr, J., Vitoux, R. R., Zavotsky, K. E., Pontieri-Lewis, V., & Colineri, L. (2019). Achieving outcomes with innovative smart pump technology: partnership, planning, and quality improvement. Journal of nursing care quality, 34(1), 9. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6282673/
