What Do You Think?

Multiple new and ongoing questions from readers. Your responses are welcome! Answer or pose a question at cathlabdigest@aol.com

New Questions!

Medications & Sterile Field What is the practice of placing medications on the sterile field. Specifically we are looking into the aspect of pouring meds into med cups, which are labeled, or is the common practice to draw the medications from the vials via needle? Email: Scott.Brunton002@chw.edu Cc: cathlabdigest@aol.com Staffing Formula Do you have a matrix or formula for cath labs that can calculate the appropriate number and blend of staff for a new cath lab built at our hospital? Email: nancy.ashmore@parisrmc.com Cc: cathlabdigest@aol.com STEMI Callback Times Does anyone have information about what the “national standard” is for call back time allowed for a cardiac cath lab? 30 minutes? Many thanks, Gayle DeBolt Email: richig@msn.com Cc: cathlabdigest@aol.com Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) A question has come up at our hospital regarding UPS systems for the x-ray equipment from our patient safety committee. Is there anyone that has a standard of all angio or cath lab rooms being on a UPS in the event of a power outage to have fluoro immediately available instead of waiting for the system to reboot? Thank you, Anonymous by request Email: cathlabdigest@aol.com Documenting Contrast When documenting, does anyone chart the amount of contrast being injected into the ventricle during a ventriculogram? I'm just wondering how many CCLs document this. Thank you! Email: cwright2@clarian.org Cc: cathlabdigest@aol.com

Answered:

STEMI Door-to-Balloon (D2B) Time Clock I am hoping you could help direct me to the right person/company. Our CCL and CPEC is looking for a particular kind of clock to be placed in the CPEC and the cath lab. The time starts in the CPEC when a patient comes in with a STEMI and is synchronized with the clock in the CCL so that everyone in the CPEC and CCL is able to see how much time is left to meet the 90-min D2B time. I’ve heard people talk of them, but no one can tell me what company may be contacted to receive more information. Any suggestions? Thank you! Email: kathryn.fraley@tenethealth.com Cc: cathlabdigest@aol.com Kathryn, With regard to synchronizing clocks in the ED and CCL — it’s much easier to do what we do, which is to simply use a stopwatch, initiated in the ED and brought to the cath lab with the patient. The clocks are not important. The elapsed time is. Warren Grand, RN, CCL/Manager Landmark Medical Center Woonsocket, RI Email: wgrand@landmarkmedical.org

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