Abstract

Presented at the 2024 Parkview Nursing Research Symposium.

Background: Rapid Response nurses are educated to respond to emergent situations and provides support to the patient care team, often intervening to prevent patient complications. These specialty nurses are repeatedly called to place an intravenous (IV) for scheduled medications when the bedside nurses is unsuccessful or hesitant to place one. Prioritizing IV starts compete with emergent patient situations which frequently cause retiming of IV antibiotics. Objectives/Aim/Purpose: The purpose of this quality improvement project was to prevent IV medication delays including re-timing. Methods: Nurses were surveyed and identified reasons for delays and re-timing of IV antibiotics. A focus group was further surveyed and verified barriers to medication delays. A retrospective electronic medical record (EMR) report was created which included reason for delays or re-timing. Rapid response nurses tracked IV start requests, prior attempts to place IV by primary nurse, and level of difficulty in placement. Results: The EMR report provided baseline data regarding reasons for retiming and amount of time for delay. Further education was provided to ensure nursing knowledge for not only reasons of medication delays but criticality of consequences of delays in administration of antibiotic. The specifics obtained from the focus group as well as the rapid response data identified the opportunity for further education to improve IV skills. Conclusion: Statistically significant results of the quantifiable outcomes will not be available for some time. The increased awareness of IV medication delay, barriers and actions identified by nursing has empowered the team to increase their skills and knowledge to improve timeliness of antibiotics.

Document Type

Meeting Abstract

Publication Date

11-2024

Download

Included in

Nursing Commons

Share

COinS