Project Overview

Intravenous line placement is an absolutely critical skill for many clinicians, yet the process can prove difficult for even the most experienced physicians and nurses. Failed line placement attempts contribute to the painful but necessary process of enduring multiple line attempt “sticks.” Placing IV lines can be difficult as a result of many scenarios, some of which include, dehydration, varying superficiality of vasculature, emergent circumstances, and even patient intolerance of the procedure, in addition to many other contributing factors. Currently, there are no widely used medical devices that, within one product, remedy the distinctly identified issues of locating viable veins, avoiding bifurcations, preventing vein rolling, locating and purging valves, and creating skin tension. The proposed solution is a U-shaped device that securely attaches to the patient, provides adjustable tension to the skin, is comfortable and compact, illuminates viable veins, and increases availability of the clinicians free hand during the line placement process. Following assessment of stress provided by the device in comparison to the current manual method of applying skin tension, with such large variance in testing results, it was found that no conclusions could be drawn regarding the similarity of the techniques. Despite the large variation, all of the stress values obtained through testing are within or slightly exceed that of average skin values, suggesting that the device was successful in applying sufficient tension to prevent vein rolling.

Team Picture

Contact Information

Team Members

• Mark Nyaeme - Team Leader
• Josiah Wolf - Communicator
• Jack Stamer - BSAC
• Mitchell Glodowski - BWIG
• Andrew Stadler - Co-BPAG
• Mitchell Korbel - Co-BPAG

Advisor and Client

• Prof. Randolph Ashton - Advisor
• Dr. Christopher Vandivort - Client

Related Projects

• Spring 2019: Intravenous (IV) line placement device
• Fall 2018: Intravenous (IV) line placement device