EBME Forums Forums Management Equipment Libraries Appropriate deployment of infusion pumps

Does any Trust have a policy that considers the appropriate deployment of infusion devices. We have guidelines for this that include using a pump for chemotherapy, parenteral nutrician, fluid balnce (renal failure), drugs and fluids containing >40mmols of potassium. However this is impossible to police and results in the Library co-ordinators hassling wards for equipment in times of shortage and makes it impossible to say that there are the right number of pumps in the system!

We've been struggling with this for a while as well ! The pharmacy were originally going to divide all the infusion drugs used in the hospital into three risk categories - yes, you've guessed - high, medium and low. These were then going to be matched to the MDA categories of infusion equipment so that you would know which infusion pump (if any) you needed to use with any drug.

Perhaps they realised that this might generate a need for more High Risk category pumps ! Or am I being cynical ?

Hello

Thse issues are governed by our IV practise development team. It is not really a technical issue more a clinical one.

The equipment library at Glenfield in Leicester looked at this when we started out in 1997. We looked at the origional asset location for all infusion devices (eg Ward 17 has 10 * P1000 and 3 * 598 infusion devices). It took a little time to work out what each wards minimum requirements for infusion devices were but we now keep a minimum number of devices in certain areas. We have also tried to standardise on infusion devices throughout the hospital. This helps with the training issue.

Hey Dave...
Did you get my e-mail I sent you a few weeks back ?

Chris-H