LAUSR

INTRODUCTION: Peripheral venous catheters are most frequently used invasive devices in the hospital and up to 70percent of patients require a peripheral venous line during their hospital stay. Phlebitis is still a common complication of peripheral venous catheter. Blockage of intravenous cannula is one of the major discomforts faced by the patients. Nurses not only directly administer the medication to the patient but also experience the difficulty while administering the medication through non patent intravenous cannula. It is one of the major role of a nurse to maintain the patency of intravenous cannula by just following a flushing techniques. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM: Assess the effectiveness of intermittent flushing of normal saline to maintain a patency of continuous intravenous cannulation among patient with intravenous medication admitted in Saveetha Medical College and Hospital. OBJECTIVE: To assess patency of intravenous cannula after intermittent normal saline flushing in experimental group and control group among hospitalized patients. To find out the association between patency of intravenous cannula (type of medication, size of cannula, site of cannula). To assess the association between the level of experimental group patency of intravenous cannulation with the demographic variables. METHODS: A Quasi-experimental study was conducted among 60 patient on intermittent intravenous medication, 30each in experimental and control group who met the inclusive criteria. Purposive sampling technique was used for selecting the sample. Data where collected from the subject using patency checklist. From the first day of intravenous cannulation, normal saline flushing with 2ml of normal saline was administered intermittently twice daily after administering intravenous medication for 72 hours to experimental group and no saline flushing given to control group. The patency was observed twice daily for both the groups until 72 hours through the observational checklist. RESULT: The findings revealed that in the experimental group, after the intervention of saline flushing ,(96.6%) patients had patent intravenous cannula for 72 hours. There was a significant difference in the patency status of intravenous cannula between the experimental and control group (t = 2.278 at 0.05 level of significance). There was statistically no significant association found between the patency of intravenous cannula with the selected extraneous variables like type of medication, size of cannula and site of cannulation. CONCLUSION: It was conducted that normal saline flushing could be used in maintaining the patency of intravenous cannula.