The patients in intensive care unit are under constant medication that is important for their survival. A difference in dosage or delay to receive it could be fatal in many instances. With nurses who are responsible to administer crucial medication while at the same time having to take care of many patients at once, there are chances that the medication could go wrong. Each nurse is required to trace the IV tube from the bag to the port in the patient before entering the medication dosage on the system. This could often be time consuming due to the many IV tubes being tangled. Karen Giuliano, associate professor of Northeastern University’s school of nursing, has found an easy way to fix this problem.
Giuliano has a designed a small flat device with cut-outs to insert the IV tubes that can be placed to organize the tubes. This would save the time for the nurse to trace each tube from the bag to the patient and would also make sure that she or he doesn’t pick up the wrong tube in haste and provide with the wrong dosage. The design of the device was shown to jack Cardin who is a high school student taking classes at the University and who is also a part of Northeastern’s Enabling Engineering Lab. With his skills, he was able to assist Giuliano in three dimensionally printing out the design. Giuliano is recruiting practicing critical care nurses to see if her device is useful for them in terms of speed and accuracy.
N Malavika Mohan