Trach Suctioning & Infection Control

Keeping Ellie's suctioning supplies clean is imperative.  Without a streamlined system to keep our supplies clean and a good schedule for replacing catheters, Ellie's risk for infection would be much higher.  Below I'm detailing what supplies we use, where to buy them and how to keep everything clean and rotated.

Supplies

Your Durable Medical Equipment (DME) provider should regularly send you:

• Suction catheters to suction the trach
• Some kind of oral/nasal suction - we have Neo Suckers
• Trach tube

Supplies you'll likely have to supply:

• Vinegar - gallon jugs
• Electric kettle for water only
• Dishwashing tub (the ugly pink multi-use tubs from the hospital work great) for washing supplies separate from other stuff or dishes in your house​
• Canning jars:
  • 1 quart size, wide mouth jar
  • 2 pint size, small mouth jars
  • 1 short profile, wide mouth 250 ml jar
• ​Plastic canning jar lids with a hole drilled in each lid.  You can drill your own or just buy pre-drilled lids.
• Sharpie oil-based paint marker for marking lids to prevent contaminating clean jars with dirty suction catheters

Throughout the day

After suctioning Ellie, this is how we clean the suction catheter and neo sucker.

1. Dip entire length of suction catheter up to thumb plug thingy (real technical I know) and suck up some 1/4 strength vinegar from jar #1.
2. Dip entire length of suction catheter up to thumb plug and suck up boiled water from jar #2.
3. Store rinsed, clean suction catheter in jar #3.

To rinse and store the nose suctioner (getting real techincal again) suck up water from the short jar labeled "nose" or "neo", disconnect suction tube from nose sucker and suction catheter between suctioning so contents from tube don't drip down into clean suction catheters.

Daily

• Wash and sanitize jars and lids
• Replace nasal suctioner (neo sucker) and suction catheter

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Tips

We like to color code our jars and lids and keep them different sizes to help avoid confusion.  In the heat of the moment during an emergency you want everything organized and labeled as clearly as possible.  We like to use the color green for the "dirty" jars/lids and purple for "clean".  By using a shorter jar for nose suction, it helps avoid confusion so you know the nose sucker always goes in the short jar.

Our goal is to change out the jars and suction catheter twice daily.  Once daily is the recommendation we were trained on but you can't be too clean with this stuff!  We put the jars and lids in the dishwasher when we run our dishwasher at night and we make sure to run a sanitize cycle.  We let the jars and lids air dry and then store them in a clean, dry cupboard until we need them.  It's good to have at least 3 sets of jars/lids to rotate, two in the dishwasher and one in use each day.