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Intravenous site care practices in critical care: a national survey
1Georgetown University School of Nursing, Washington, DC 20007-2194, USA.
Objective:
To collect and compare written procedures for central line intravenous site care.
Design:
Descriptive, stratified, random sample survey.
Setting:
Adult medical-surgical critical care units among hospitals throughout the United States.
Sample:
One hundred fifty-two returned surveys.
Results:
A 24.6% response rate with underrepresentation from smaller institutions and hospitals in the Mid-Atlantic and West South Central regions of the country. There were wide variations in procedures for intravenous site care related to type of dressing used and frequency of dressing changes.
Conclusions:
Standardization of catheter care is needed to ensure consistent quality of intravenous site care. Lack of standardization may be due to lack of a research data base linking various components of care to outcomes such as infection, patient comfort, or catheter retention.