In australia, ive never seen a nurse burp a bag. I have cystic fibrosis and they always just set the pump to go for a certain amount of fluids. The machine automatically picks up if theres too much air and stops the infusion
We were taught to “burp” the bag in nursing school. This is to keep air from getting into the line, and yes the pump will beep and stop the infusion if there is air, but we try to keep it from needing to beep or stop so the medication can be infused without interruption. Also, when there is air in the line, the machine will beep and then it may wake the patient up and it will stop the medication until the nurse is able to fix it. It’s not something that is an absolute necessity but it can be very helpful for the nurses and patients to go ahead and prevent any kind of disruption in medication delivery or needing to fix the line later while the patient may be sleeping or with visitors etc.
One of my cats had kidney disease and I gave her fluids every day. I never burped the bag. I just made sure there was no air in the line before starting.
Hi nurse here! There’s actually 2 kinds of lines you can have with IV fluids. 1 kind is on a pump that regulates the flow of the fluid or Med you are given. The other kind is straight to gravity. We will often use fluids to gravity if we need to get them in fast. The method shown in the video is used for a bag connected to IV gravity tubing. This is method of priming the tubing is not to make sure air bubbles don’t get in the line. It is to make sure that when that bag fully runs out, the extra air in the bag doesn’t get into the line at the end. If that happens it is a much more tedious process to remove that air from the line when you hang your next bag. When you push out all that air at the beginning, that ensures that when that bag runs out you will still have you IV tubing primed without extra air in the line. Hope this helps!
All nurses need to see this. I have had some big bubbles in mine and I stopped it myself so I wouldn't get big air bubbles in my blood and have something serious happen.
🤦♀️ maybe get all the bubbles out before you start the drip. Air doesn't magically appear in the line. You probably didn't get the air bubbles at the ports
The air in the bag is to monitor how much fluid has been given and to infuse the full amount in the bag. This is accurate dosing if giving the full amount 1000ml. Side marking are in 100ml increments. If air is getting into the patient infusion line it’s not because of air in bag, it’s the incorrect level in the spike drip chamber. If the level is too low it can send some of the air in the drip chamber to the patient line. Drip chamber should be about 1/2 full, just enough to count the drops. Counting the drops use to be the old way of adjusting the infusion rate over a prolonged period of time, hours or day. FYI your body doesn’t suck in the fluid, gravity pushes it down, and that’s why the patient access needs to always be below the bag. When nurses take the air out of the bag they know the whole bag will be administered and don’t want to worry about checking on you at a specific time. Last ring if a IV pump is in place this is totally unnecessary. IV pumps need to see the change from fluid to air in the line or drip chamber (depending on model) to automatically stop when fully infused and is a safeguard built in to them. So no worries 😮
I usually just pop the tube in and close the rolling clamp before filling the chamber. After the chamber has been filled, open it up. Works like a charm ☺️
Exactly. I really only screw with sucking air out of bag if I'm setting up an art line. Straight up saline shut the clamp, fill the chamber, prime to the end and go.
@@trentt4170 I hang fluid to gravity a lot... just time it lol. Idk I guess I'm an old nurse now. I literally have only ever taken air out of a bag before hand for art lines.
You’re supposed to leave the air in the bag so you can accurately measure how much has been administered. Without the air at the top of the bag, you can’t measure the fluid level in the bag itself.
ahhh that's why I kept getting bubbles!! I had one med that didn't need to be spiked (meaning it spilled on me) so I always spike my bags upside down now but it creates more bubbles! I'll try your burping method next time 💞
No need to draw air out of the bag. Just run the fluid through the line, and the air comes out first. Even if you see little bubbles in the line, they are not able to get into the vein. The fluid goes in, not the air. If you wanted to get air into the blood vessel,it would have to be a large volume of air, pushed in with force by hand. Impossible for air to be dripped in with fluids running passively.
It IS actually quite hard for air to get into veins yesh Coming from someone trained and also awkwardly an ex heroin addict I was super neurotic for a while But yeah you're totally right
I had a pump malfunction once and fail to stop when the fluids were gone. By the time I realized it, the downstream portion of the line only had an inch or two of fluid left in it. Gravity or pump, I just prefer to burp the bag out of an abundance of caution (especially if I might need to sleep during an infusion, or if it’s going in a backpack where I can’t see it at a glance). I also find it easier to spike the bag upside down rather than hanging upright.
EMT here, we do none of that 😂 It's pretty much spike the bag, full send and let it drip on the floor so we know there's no air. Feels so rudimentary compared to that method
As an ex patient who went to the general hospital a lot for mental health when I was on drip I used to turn the little thing that stopped the fluid from going in my body to not allow treatment it annoyed fhe nurses but also if someone as tried to end their life than surely you don’t give them power to stop it.
You're lucky that the nurse only annoyed. Cause some antipsychotics are high alert, If it were my country the nurses will not hesitate to restrain the patient. 😥 Hope you doing well and stay healthy now 🙏💞
@@netithunti5993 thank you. It’s the same here (uk) it just depends if someone is actively trying to hurt themselves or someone else then they will be restrained I have many many times but if your just a risk than they just watch you (all the time)
@@Bracyteaker11 Ohh that's sounds half good half bad to me! You might felt really uncomfortable with those watch over pressure, but it's definitely better than restrained though. Glad you managed to take all of those! ☺️
Alternatively if you're using an IV pump just set the amount to be infused at 50-100 mLs less than what's in the bag (depending on infusion rate), then the alarm will remind you early to switch out the bags before you even risk running out of fluid (since you typically end up wasting a bit its really only a good idea with stuff like maintenance NS or LR, you don't want to waste something like TPN so this is still a good technique to know)
@@wilsonparker2832So sorry to hear you guys complain deeply about the Nclex exam won't be a problem to you anymore, if you work with someone like Clara. She helped me through my exam and I made it through.
The many times I've had bubbles when I've had fluids given to me. I mentioned it to a fee nurses and they said the bubbles are tiny they are OK won't got all the way through and when it's in the machiene they sometimes use will beep and stop of it detects any bubbles to large to be sent through.
If you are running the IV through a machine, which you should be, unless it is a trauma case, the machine will not allow the air through. Also, if you set your pump properly, it will stop before you get close to the air. I've been a nurse over a decade and have never had issues.
I used to syringe suction all the air out. Nobody ever showed me this method. I’m not a nurse, but I’ve had many sick pets that were on IV fluids and I would take a needle and suck the air out.
I dont work in medicine so this may be a stupid question. But why dont manufacturers just sell their IV bags without air in them? :/ Would save you guys time, no?
Also! In a pharmacy perspective, IV techs fill up these bags with additional drugs like antibiotics. I work at a children’s hospital so we do this quite often because it dilutes these medications when added to these prefilled bags.
You can and no nurse I work with does this, it's simply unnecessary. The air does never reach further than the drip chamber, it physically cannot reach the vein (has to do with pressure difference I think?).
Lmfao. This is standard in vet med 😂 The more I learn about human medicine, the more I know to befriend a vet tech and not a human nurse for the apocalypse 🤣 Though I do know a human nurse that's also a vet tech, so either way I win.
I’m sorry, I thought I had been around medicine long enough to know these things(born with spina bifida; I’m not a medical professional), but I guess not. What is so important about removing extra air from an iv bag?
Got any advice for difficult veins? Im not talking obese or old, I'm talking like severe iv heroin etc addicts Im really struggling with a guy and ge needs it since he has cancer and needs chemo etc Im normally really good But its so bad Please any of you guys who know help me!!!
If the nurse does it wrong, would that mean the bag might cause slight suction due to a pressure difference? I had an I.V. bag start to suck out my blood through the line when I was a kid, and that was just ~~pure trauma~~🎉
No there is no reverse pressure or "suction". The iv pump machine pushes fluid into your vein. If blood was going up the iv out of your body either 1: the iv pump was not running, or 2: the bag is not attached to the iv pump and the iv bag just ran out of fluid. The force of your heart pumping blood can slowly push a little bit of blood out of your body into the iv tubing if the iv is not clamped or does not have running fluid. The "burping" of the iv bag is not really necessary as the pumps we have nowdays wont pump if it detects air bubbles in the line.
@@alicetheoracle2351 Thanks for the explanation, I don't know much about the subject myself. It might have been the matter of the bag running dry, as I doubt they used IV pumps back then. :)
IV pumps have been around since the 1960s or more. They have been standard in even rural hospitals for over 20 years. All drugs and fluids have to be given with a pump for pediatric patients has been standard of care for 20 years.
Just wait till you look up how much salt is in one of those, and how many bags per day they give people, and how much salt youre supposed to ingest daily, 😁
Please youtubers, please...for heck sake PLEASE stop using that voice! I hate it, it's so unpleasant to my ears. I would much rather hear people's natural voice!!
