Antibiotic infusions: primary vs. secondary

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Wed, 09/26/2018 - 09:36
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Stacie Ethington
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Joined: 12/07/2016 - 11:14
Antibiotic infusions: primary vs. secondary

I am part of a 500+ bed, urban, academic organization. As far as antibiotic infusions go, we currently only run Zosyn as a primary infusion (run over 4 hours); our other antibiotic infusions are run as a primary/secondary set up. During the normal saline shortage, we ran all antibiotics primary and flushed with a 10 mL flush post infusion. Now that we are able to go back to our primary/secondary set up, we are getting some pushback from nursing.

How does your organization infuse IV antibiotics?

We feel the benefits of running as a primary/secondary set up are:
-minimizes lost volume during priming
-risk of patient not receiving full ordered dose is minimal
-not ALL meds have the same volume/overfill so having varying practices for when to use primary/secondary set up would be non-standardized, thus, not desired

Thanks for your help.
Stacie Ethington
Medication Safety Nurse Specialist
Nebraska Medicine

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