LIFE WITH ELLIE
  • Home
  • Team Ellie
    • Caregiver Training
    • School
  • Help
  • Blog
  • We Recommend
  • Donate
  • Shop
Picture

Trach Suctioning & Infection Control

1/9/2018

2 Comments

 
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
Picture

Our Favorites:

By making purchases by clicking through the above affiliate links I will get a very small commission to help support this blog. Thanks for your support!

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.
2 Comments
Michelle
1/10/2018 01:25:32 pm

Love how this information is presented, well done!

Reply
Courtney Stinson
1/10/2018 01:28:56 pm

Thanks Michelle :)

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Picture

    Author

    Hi I'm Courtney, Ellie's mom.  Along with my village I have been raising Ellie (and her big brother Nathan) while learning how to live with and support Ellie's physical disabilities and special needs.  It's not easy but our village is amazing.  Thank you to all of you who support us, love us, and give hope, send wishes and prayers.  We are so incredibly grateful for our community.
    With love,
    Courtney


    Archives

    October 2022
    November 2020
    March 2020
    August 2019
    September 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    July 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    September 2015


    Click the button below to make a donation to Ellie's MiAble account.
    MiAble

    Picture

    RSS Feed

    $10 Sago Mini Box Promotion
    Goodbye Rusty Lids, Hello reCAP Mason Jar Lids

Thanks for being part of our village!
​
​Check out more of our family's shenanigans below or over here -->


Savor Life Nutrition

Food & Nutrition services

Cooking For Tubies

Tube Feeding and Home Enteral Nutrition

​Mother Hen Farms

Moody Broody Flower Growing Foodie!
  • Home
  • Team Ellie
    • Caregiver Training
    • School
  • Help
  • Blog
  • We Recommend
  • Donate
  • Shop