Hello all,

My institution is working to change our latex precaution policy with regard to medication preparation. Currently, for patients with Type 1 allergies to latex, we remove any latex containing caps from medication vials before drawing up the parenteral medication. We plan to move to a single-stick/single-entry policy that would allow nursing and pharmacy staff to enter a vial once, regardless of latex content.

For those institutions that follow a single-stick policy:

1) Do you make any distinction between dry natural rubber (DNR) versus natural rubber latex (NRL)? This would mostly be an issue for vials that we allow to be multi-dose within the walls of the pharmacy.

2) How do you handle insulin vials? It seems both insulin lispro and the Humulin R brand of insulin regular U-100 (which we use) contain dry natural rubber. Do you allow these to be multi-use for latex allergy patients?

3) Would you be willing to share your policy?

4) Any lessons learned if you made a policy change?

Thank you,
James