Closed-wound Drain Management: Procedure (Nursing)

00:04 Now, once we've placed the disposable pad underneath the patient's drain, this is a good time to unclip it from the patient's clothing.

00:11 Now, many times that drain is coming out of incision that's in the patient's body, we don't want the drain dragging behind them.

00:19 We don't want it getting caught in the bedrail and pulled, so usually we have it affixed to the patient's clothing for easy access and again to reduce tagging or pulling.

00:30 Now, is a good time to expose the drain site and the insertion site.

00:34 This is a really important step that we make sure that we assess this insertion site thoroughly.

00:41 Now, if you'd taken a look at this image here, you will see that little black wire around that? That's actually a suture and this is what helps keep the actual drain attached to the patient.

00:53 So it's really important to assess around this site and look for things such as swelling, redness, any weird colored discharge like you see in this other image.

01:02 If you see any signs and symptoms of infection, you want to make sure you promptly alert the physician.

01:09 Now, we can go ahead and release the vacuum on the drain chamber and this is where we have the stopper or the plug and you can open this up.

01:17 Now, once you've opened up that stopper, it's going to allow the ball or the chamber to expand with the air and inflate fully.

01:25 Now, we can go ahead and drain all the contents that that JP has collected into the graduated cylinder.

01:33 So if you need to you may need to squeeze on it to empty it like you see in the image here.

01:38 This is really important that we use a graduated cylinder because it has special markings for measurement and that is so important to document for the physician to know when the drain can be removed or not.

01:52 Now, this is another piece of assessment that we need to look at.

01:55 What is the contents of that drainage? Now, it could look serous like you see here, kind of a light yellowy, watery to sanguineous which is really bloody. Now, after some time, you may see a bloody sanguineous drainage, kind of lighten up over time towards a mix of that serous clear fluid and the blood.

02:16 We call that serosanguineous. All of those are perfectly okay.

02:20 Now, what you don't want to see is the other image here in yellow, that's called purulent drainage. That is a bad sign.

02:29 If you see some white, milky, purulent drainage, again, please alert the physician very quickly because this is a very serious sign of infection.

02:41 Now, once that we've drained it, you can use alcohol pad to make sure we cleansed that plug or the stopper on the drain, and then we really want to fully compress that drain chamber again.

02:52 We've kinda called this a thumb compression as you see here on the image.

02:56 We usually take the bulb in our hand and compress down with our thumb, that's going to create a vacuum, because the plug is open, then we want to make sure we hold compression and replace the plug to maintain the seal.

03:10 Now, we want to check the tubing for patency, make sure it's not kinked, make sure it's not leaking anywhere.

03:15 And if ordered, clean the side as needed and replace the dressing.

03:21 Now, we want to secure the drain back to the patients clothing and use a safety pin.

03:25 So again, just a note, any time you have a drain site, typically this is always going to have an order to cover this until it gets removed.

03:35 And even upon removal of any of these type of drains, we typically keep a dressing covered until that heals.