Tired of searching for info? Here's the answer
Tired of searching for info? Here's the answer
Two products provide everything you need
As a home infusion nurse, you don't have the luxury of an on-site reference library or a full-time staff to answer your every question. As a result, most home infusion nurses fill their trunks with reference tools and resources.
But Abar Company of St. Louis is now offering readily accessible reference guides that allow home infusion nurses to have nearly all the information they need regarding intravascular devices, infusion therapy, and central venous catheters. Two products are available from Abar: the IV Nurse Companion and the Central Venous Catheters Nurse Companion.
The two products are already proving popular with nurses. Karen Hawkins, CRNA, CRNI, a Neptune Beach, FL, consultant who provides intravenous therapy and nurse education teaching to various health care facilities, highly recommends the Nurse Companions. Any home infusion nurse will benefit from the products, regardless of experience level, Hawkins says.
"There are two different levels of people," she says. "Many of the nurses who I teach are novices and need some elementary education and references, which the IV Nurse Companion is marvelous for."
The product provides information on 25 topics, all on a series of laminated, four-color index cards that fit easily inside a shirt pocket. Topics addressed in the IV Nurse Companion include:
· determining IV drug concentration;
· drug dosage calculations;
· flow rate conversion chart;
· most accurate means of determining infiltration;
· bio-incompatibility/patency flushing, and more.
"This gives them a wonderful reference and it shows them that the IV specialty is a more important specialty than many consider it," notes Hawkins. "This is a wonderful reference."
The Central Venous Catheters Nurse Companion may be more appropriate for an IV specialist, according to Hawkins.
"It's absolutely wonderful for your true IV nurse specialists and people who are working in intensive care units," she says. "It gives anatomical references, flush volumes, and facts that I don't always have right at my fingertips. It's wonderful for the person who is on a higher level."
"The Central Venous Catheters Nurse Companion is very comprehensive," says Joel Moomey, RN, a clinical and didactic nurse educator based in Florrisant, MO. "As comprehensive as it is, it's like an inservice on central lines."
The information contained in the Companions isn't difficult to come by if you have the time and convenience to do a literature scan. But for home infusion nurses, that's a huge inconvenience.
"I carry reference books in my car when doing home infusion, but the problem is, they stay in the car and I'm in the patient's house," says Moomey. "One of the most useful things about the Nurse Companions are their size. They are compact and they stay right with me in my pocket, and other than drugs, the IV Nurse Companion has the information I'd refer to in the books."
That's exactly the point of the Companions, according to Darnell Roth, RN, CRNI, an IV nurse consultant, vice-president of Abar Company, and developer of the Companions.
"The need was there because participants in various programs voiced a common need for readily accessible reference tools," she says. "As home care nurses, we often have reference books in the trunk of the car, so the information is there, yet it's not. I've also heard from nurses that inside a structured health facility that they often had to search through books that weren't up to date."
The IV Nurse Companion costs $14.95, and the Central Venous Catheters Nurse Companion costs $16.95. Order both for $29.95. For more information, call Abar Company at (314) 752-3089 or (314) 664-3611; fax: (314) 776-6230; e-mail: [email protected]; or visit the company's Web site at www.abarco.com.
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