Adoption of Safer Enteral Connections Key to Patient Safety

These are challenging times for hospitals of all sizes. Due to the crush of patients suffering from COVID-19, caregivers are stretched thin and stressed out. The ripple effects are everywhere in the hospital system.

These heavy patient loads raise the risk that a busy caregiver might make an all-too-common medical error caused by tubing misconnections. An array of technology is used at the bedside – IVs, catheters, feeding tubes and more. These devices often have compatible connectors that make it too easy to send, for instance, medication meant for a feeding tube into the IV instead. This can result in tragic patient outcomes, such as:

• A feeding tube was wrongly connected to a tracheotomy tube and delivered milk into an infant’s lung, resulting in death.
• An epidural infusion set was connected to a peripheral IV, delivering epidural medication to a patient’s bloodstream, resulting in death.
• A feeding tube was connected to an in-line ventilator suction catheter, delivering feeding contents into the patient’s lungs, resulting in death.

These outcomes illustrate the importance of adopting solutions.