Is That A Banana In Your Pocket?

One of my goals this summer is to learn how to set a catheter in an animal. Since I am at the mercy of the emergencies that come in, I may not achieve this goal. By that I mean that the physical condition and size of the animals that arrive at the clinic at night entirely dictate whether my experienced co-workers need to set the catheter while I hold the animal. I don't have the luxury of poking any animal in my attempts to learn. And that ideal animal or two might not walk in the door between now and the end of September.

Getting the catheter in the vein is only a small part of the process. I could write an entire post about all the things that can go wrong, and right, with this. But the catheter then has to be taped in place in such a way that it is secured to the animal's leg but the tape is not so tight that it constricts return blood flow from the limb (which leads to "mega-paw" when the paw swells up because the venous blood can't return and collects in it). 

So I decided to start my learning process with the taping part. And I decided to practice on a banana. Laugh all you want, but it turned out to be a pretty good learning tool.

Here's a picture of my third taping effort:

Not great, but not horrible! We re-used the same catheter and T-port many times since there was not a concern about keeping things sterile--we were sticking it in a banana after all--and I just cut off the tape from previous attempts and started over. And over.

There are four pieces of tape on that banana. The first is the minimum point of attachment of the catheter to the limb. The second securely attaches it. The third is what my co-worker calls the "bra": it secures the T-port (the green thing sticking out is one of the ends of the T-port; it is inserted directly into the catheter). And the fourth creates a stress loop for the short T-port line that you can see looping over the top of the tape, so that if the animal pulls on its line, the stress loop should prevent it from pulling the T-port out entirely (the IV line will attach to the clear end of the T-port that you can see on the right). But as you learned from the previous post, this can happen even if the tape job is perfect but the animal is thrashing around with unusual vigor.

Not all clinics put a T-port in the catheter. You can hook the IV line directly into it. But this clinic puts T-ports in all catheters so that determines how I am learning to tape.

Taping a catheter has some basic rules and requirements but there are quite a few acceptable, and safe, individual variations. And as my co-worker pointed out, a giant wad of tape over the thing would probably work but it is not pretty or the best solution. Learning how to tape the catheter efficiently and with consistency means that even if you are no longer at work, the current animal care team knows what to expect.

I taped the catheter into the banana four times tonight. It was a mess. Tape sticking to me, to itself, to wrong parts of the banana. Fingers fumbling--do I use my left hand or my right hand for this? Oh, that piece is too short to wrap around like I intended. It was frustrating but I kept reminding myself, there will be a living creature on the other end of this. You need to learn how to do this right.

Sure, a banana is not close to the real thing, an animal that feels pain, that bleeds, that has hair (more things for the tape to stick to), that doesn't want to hold still. But if I can get even a little bit more comfortable with the taping part, then I will be ready when and if that perfect animal comes in the door.

In case you were wondering, I tossed the banana in the trash when I clocked out. Ew.