Keeping Your IV Safe: Infection Prevention

Having an IV line or catheter means there is a direct pathway into your bloodstream — which is exactly what your care team needs to deliver treatment. But that same pathway can sometimes allow bacteria to enter your body if it is not cared for carefully. The good news is that catheter-related infections are largely preventable, and you and your family can play an important role in preventing them.

Why Catheter Infections Are Serious

An infection that travels through an IV line into the bloodstream is called a catheter-related bloodstream infection (CRBSI) or — when it involves a central catheter — a central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI). These are serious infections that can:

Cause fever, chills, and severe illness
Require removal of the catheter
Result in a prolonged hospital stay
In severe cases, be life-threatening

These infections are not an inevitable risk of IV therapy. Hospitals track them carefully and have strict protocols designed to prevent them. Understanding those protocols — and how you fit into them — helps keep you safe.

What Your Care Team Does to Prevent Infections

Before you can play your role, it helps to understand what your team is already doing:

Hand Hygiene Before Every Contact

Your nurses, doctors, and other caregivers are required to wash their hands or use alcohol-based hand gel before and after every interaction with your IV line, catheter, or insertion site. This is the single most important infection prevention measure in healthcare.

You have the right to ask any care team member: “Have you cleaned your hands?” Healthcare workers welcome this question — it is part of a culture of safety.

Sterile Technique for Procedures

When your vascular access nurse places a PICC line or central catheter, they wear a sterile gown, gloves, hat, and mask, and drape a large sterile field over you. This is called maximum barrier precautions and dramatically reduces the risk of introducing bacteria during placement.

For routine catheter care — dressing changes, cap changes, accessing a port — your nurse uses a technique called aseptic non-touch technique (ANTT), which means critical parts of the equipment (the parts that touch the inside of the catheter) are never touched without sterile gloves, and every surface involved in catheter care is kept meticulously clean.

Skin Antisepsis

Before placing a catheter or changing a dressing, your nurse will clean your skin with a special antiseptic solution — usually chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG). This is applied in a scrubbing motion and allowed to dry completely before any catheter work is done. This process kills bacteria on the skin’s surface.

You may also receive CHG-impregnated bathing cloths (CHG wipes) for daily bathing if you have a central catheter. Your nurse will explain how to use these.

Sterile Dressings and Regular Changes

Your catheter site is covered with a transparent or gauze dressing that keeps the site clean and protected. This dressing is changed on a regular schedule (usually every 7 days for transparent dressings, or every 2 days for gauze) or sooner if it becomes loose, wet, or soiled. A chlorhexidine-impregnated disc is often placed under the dressing at the insertion site for additional antimicrobial protection.

Daily Review

Your care team reviews your catheter every day to decide whether it is still necessary. The safest catheter is one that comes out the day it is no longer needed. Do not be surprised if your team discusses removing your IV sooner than you expected — early removal is a safety measure, not an oversight.

What You Can Do: Your Role in Infection Prevention

1. Wash Your Hands

Hand hygiene is just as important for you and your visitors as it is for your care team. Wash your hands with soap and water (for at least 20 seconds) or use the alcohol hand gel available at your bedside:

Before you touch anything near your catheter site
After using the bathroom
Before eating
After coughing, sneezing, or blowing your nose
When a family member or visitor arrives or leaves your room

Ask visitors to do the same. This is especially important in hospital rooms, where hand hygiene reduces the spread of all types of infections, not just catheter-related ones.

2. Do Not Touch the Catheter, Tubing, or Dressing

Unless your nurse has taught you a specific care task (such as flushing your own line at home), do not touch, adjust, or pull on your catheter, IV tubing, or dressing. The connections between the catheter and the IV tubing are kept sterile; touching them can introduce bacteria.

Do not try to re-tape a loose dressing — call your nurse.
Do not remove a wet or soiled dressing yourself — call your nurse.
Do not reconnect tubing that has fallen out or become disconnected — call your nurse and do not touch the open end.

3. Keep the Site Dry

Water can carry bacteria into the catheter site or under the dressing. When bathing:

For peripheral IVs: cover the site with a waterproof barrier (your nurse can provide a specialized arm sleeve or waterproof tape).
For PICC lines and central catheters: follow your nurse’s specific instructions. You can often shower using a special waterproof sleeve, but submerging the site in a bath, hot tub, or pool is generally not permitted.
Pat gently around the dressing if it becomes splashed, and let your nurse know so they can check the integrity of the dressing.

4. Tell Your Nurse Right Away If You Notice Changes at the Site

You see your IV site more than anyone else on your care team. You are uniquely positioned to notice early warning signs. Report any of the following immediately:

Redness around the insertion site
Swelling or puffiness near the site
Pain, tenderness, or burning at or near the site
Warmth around the site
Any drainage, oozing, or discharge from the site
The dressing looking loose, wet, bubbled, or soiled
The catheter appearing to have moved in or out of the insertion site

These may be signs of infection, inflammation, or a mechanical problem — all of which are treatable if caught early.

5. Tell Your Nurse Right Away If You Feel Unwell

Sometimes the first sign of a catheter-related infection is not a change at the insertion site — it is how you feel overall. Report these symptoms promptly:

Fever (temperature over 38°C / 100.4°F), particularly if accompanied by shaking chills
Sudden feeling of being very cold, then hot
Unusual fatigue, weakness, or confusion
Rapid heartbeat or feeling your heart pounding

Fever with chills in a patient with a central catheter is considered a possible bloodstream infection until proven otherwise. Your team will draw blood cultures and assess the catheter quickly. Do not wait or assume a fever will pass on its own.

6. Limit What You Put Near the Catheter

Keep items like blankets, clothing, and personal belongings away from the IV site and tubing. Bacteria can transfer from surfaces to the catheter area. If anything falls onto or near the catheter connection, tell your nurse.

7. Be Honest About Your Health History

Let your care team know about:

Any previous catheter infections
Any history of MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) or other drug-resistant organisms
Whether you are immunocompromised (e.g., on chemotherapy, corticosteroids, or immunosuppressants) — this affects how closely your catheter must be monitored
Any allergies to antiseptics, tapes, or dressings

8. Support Good Visitor Hygiene

Family members and visitors are welcome, but they should:

Wash or gel their hands when entering and leaving the room
Not visit if they are feeling unwell (coughing, sneezing, have a fever, have been exposed to illness)
Avoid touching the catheter, tubing, or dressing
Follow any isolation precautions posted on your room door (see below)

Understanding Isolation Precautions

If you see a sign on your hospital room door with special instructions, this means transmission-based precautions are in place — usually because you have a specific infection that requires extra steps to prevent it from spreading to others (or to protect you from infections circulating in the hospital).

Contact precautions (yellow): Anyone entering must wear gloves and a gown.
Droplet precautions (pink): Anyone within 3 feet must wear a surgical mask.
Airborne precautions (grey/white): Anyone entering must wear a specialized N95 mask; the room may have special ventilation.

These precautions are not a sign that you have done anything wrong. They are standard infection control protocols. Always ask your nurse what the sign means and whether there is anything extra you or your visitors should do.

CHG (Chlorhexidine) Bathing

If you have a central catheter (PICC, central line, or port), your nurse may give you CHG-impregnated cloths for daily bathing instead of regular soap and water. CHG is an antiseptic that reduces the amount of bacteria on your skin and has been shown to lower the risk of catheter-related bloodstream infections.

How to use CHG cloths:

Use one cloth for each body area (there are usually 6 cloths in a package — one per body zone)
Gently wipe, do not rinse off — the CHG works while it stays on your skin
Avoid the face, eyes, mucous membranes, and any open wounds
Let your skin air-dry; do not apply lotion over the areas you wiped
Follow any additional instructions from your nurse

Tell your nurse if you experience skin irritation from CHG cloths — alternatives are available.

A Note About Antibiotics and IV Therapy

If you are receiving IV antibiotics, it is important to:

Receive each dose at the scheduled time (your nurse monitors this)
Complete the full prescribed course, even if you feel better
Report any side effects (rash, nausea, diarrhea, difficulty breathing) immediately

Do not stop or skip doses without discussing it with your care team.

This guide is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for advice from your own healthcare team. Always follow the specific instructions given to you by your nurses and doctors.