IV fluid rates in the ER: It's either "wide-open or none"

Scalpel eloquently continues:

I want my patient to have a liter of normal saline intravenously. If the patient is stable, I really don’t care if it goes in over 10 minutes, 30 minutes, or an hour. Just give them the dang liter and re-assess them for me please.

Comments

Gasman
One cannot give a bolus with an infusion pump. All the brands I’ve seen max out at 999 ml/hour. This rate falls short of a bolus and is way short of rates required in resuscitative situations. The alternative, having 6 to 10 pumps arrayed in a massively parallel system merely increases the likelihood of air embolus, wrong fluid bag, and line spagetti by 6 to 10 fold. IV poles have maximum weights to prevent tippiness so this would likely require 3 to 5 poles. Just try pushing the bed down the hall on the way to CT with all this crap.
Lets try it for the first time with the administrator’s kid just extracted from a car wreck.

IV fluid rates in the ER: It’s either "wide-open or none"

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