Ideas That Work: A Dopamine Code Cart Reminder

INFUSION PUMP A simple sign reminds staff not to administer dopamine through ordinary IV apparatus.

A Dopamine Code Cart Reminder

If you stock an emergency drug with a narrow therapeutic range, like dopamine, in your code cart, it's critical to precisely control the infusion rate so you can titrate the dosage to the desired response. For this reason, you want to administer dopamine through a volumetric infusion pump — not through ordinary IV apparatus regulated only by gravity and mechanical clamps. To remind staff who might be scrambling in an emergency, we taped a reminder to the forward-facing dopamine package that's visible in our code cart. In a crisis situation, it's best to have layers of redundancy. We've never had to use dopamine, and I hope we never do. But should the time ever come, this simple sign will help ensure that we infuse it properly.

???Paul Schaefer, MD
Middlesex Center for Advanced Orthopedic Surgery
Middletown, Conn.
[email protected]