hi team! today we are talking about the Alaris pump so if you've never worked
with one or you are new to the Alaris pump stay tuned we're gonna talk about
how to get it started some of the programs and a little bit of
troubleshooting right after this welcome back my name is Tammy and this is nurse
minder and we do everything nursing here so if you're new consider subscribing
and you'll be notified when the next video is released so let's get on to the
Alaris pump and there's no better way to work with it than to actually have one
in front of us so we're gonna go right to the lab so let's get started and turn
this baby on now the Alaris pump will do some system checks before we can program
anything in here for our patient and for demonstration purposes I have chosen to
have two channels already attached to the pump
the first screen we're going to see is do you have a new patient selecting no
means you've worked with this patient for a while and the previous settings
will be displayed selecting yes will take us to the next screen and ask us if
we are in adultl critical care selecting yes will take us to a specific menu for
critical care patients we're gonna select no which will take us to the menu
for the Med surg units here we have another option to go adult critical care
adult general education for adults etc we are selecting adult general confirm
at the bottom so let's go ahead and press that confirm patient ID entry you
can simply hit confirm at the stage or you can enter in the patient's ID and
then hit confirm now it's taking us to our channels a and B you can't press
these little arrows instead you need to select on the channel itself which pump
you're working with so let's go ahead and select channel a after selecting
your channel we are now prompted to select the type of fluids we are
infusing let's go into guardrail drugs here we have a menu of medications that
you might be administering to your patient you will notice the right-hand
side has a menu that we also can select this has groupings of medications for
example A to E, F to J; if we select one of those it will
break it down to ABCDE which quickly allows us to find the drug that we're
looking for for example cefazolin and select it you can see we already have
pre-programmed doses in the machine so you simply need to select the one that
you've mixed up one gram in 50 mils as an example the machine will ask if this
is correct we'll select yes it will then take a search screen which shows us the
breakdown of drug diluent and concentration and then the next screen
is going to tell me how fast this drug has already been programmed to run it's
important to note that a nurse's responsibility is to make sure that the
information on this pump is in accordance with your agency policy
before you press Start once started the machine will start to deliver the
medication you have put in now you'll note that my channel A says to check IV
set and that is because I actually have not put in my line yet let's rewind
let's go back to when we first selected our channel and go under guardrail IV
fluids this time here you'll find where your blood products and your
electrolytes are housed you'll also find a general IV solution button here and
this is what we use when we do a basic infusion for normal saline for example
or ringers lactate so we're going to go back now and select that IV solution
under I and it's this correct yes it is and now you can see where you can set in
the rate and the volume to be infused I've got a 250 ml bag I always like to
leave myself room so I'm just gonna put 200 mls so when it beeps at me I've got
about a half an hour left and then I simply just press Start and my infusion
will go so let's insert our line we're gonna open up the clamp take off a blue
Cathalon off our primary line and seat the pump portion of the IV line into the
appropriate chambers we're going to close the safety clamp
and make sure our roller clamps and everything are open so that the fluid
can flow and then we can hit start once it's attached to our patient now we just
need to verify that what we programmed is in fact going in through our channel
you'll notice on the screen across on channel a it says IV solution and that
is exactly what I programmed and that the rate is 100 mls per hour and the
green light indicates my line is in fact infusing now if we look at some
troubleshooting what happens when that green light changes for example what if
I get some air in the line you'll notice that the light has changed from green to
red and it's flashing air in the line that means the tubing within the chamber
is problematic the first step is to select the channel and to hit start that
is your first troubleshooting if that clears it awesome if it doesn't you're
gonna get another alarm air in the line so step two is to take the safety clamp
off and examine the line inside the chamber I can see that there are a few
air bubbles in here and so what I'm gonna do is just gently stretch this
line out and flick those air bubbles upwards to get rid of them so that when
I seat it back in the pump it's gonna work now it's always a good idea to wait
a few seconds to make sure that in fact the pump is working properly the next
troubleshooting we're going to look at is when there's a problem downstream of
the chamber so we now see it's checking the line and that's because I've
occluded the clamp the roller clamp so I can demonstrate this for you so it's
gone to yellow while the machine is checking the line to see where is the
source of this problem it will soon tell me that it is occluded on the patient's
side this is an indicator I need to look at the line from the machine to the
patient and what I'm gonna find is my clamp I forgot to unroll it happens all
the time I'm gonna unroll that select my channel
and start my infusion wait a few seconds make sure everything is fine before you
turn your back because if you don't three steps away it's gonna be beeping
at you now there is the option to pause the Machine for a few moments if you're
working with the patient select the channel hit pause you see the yellow
light come on or if you want to turn the channel off completely maybe you're just
connecting for a shower again select the channel you're going to hold down the
channel off button for a count of three it's located under the pause button one
two three and you can release and then you're going to see that the channel is
powering down
well that's our lesson for today I hope you enjoyed it give a thumbs up if it
was helpful comment below and let me know what you think and if you have some
ideas for future videos put them there as well
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I've got some other videos populating here that you might be interested in so
enjoy and until next time make it a great day