• Nancy A Ford, Henry R Drott, and Jean Anne Cieplinski-Robertson.
• The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
• Pediatr Nurs. 2003 Jul 1; 29 (4): 283-6, 319.

AbstractComplete intravenous (IV) drug administration to a pediatric patient is an important nursing intervention. Verification of the amount of flush solution that is necessary to deliver > 95% of an IV medication to the patient was the goal of a laboratory demonstration and a clinical study. In the laboratory, it was determined that three times the volume of the dead space of the IV tubing was the required volume needed to flush dye from IV administration sets. This principle was then applied to pediatric patients receiving tobramycin medication therapy. Nurses administered tobramycin through 27 IV solusets of patients using three measured volumes of IV flush solution. Samples were collected from the IV tubing and analyzed to measure the concentration of tobramycin in the tubing. All three resulted in administration of > 95% of the medication. A nursing procedure was written to standardize the administration of IV medications to pediatric patients using two times the volume of the dead space of the IV tubing as the flush volume.

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