Aims/Objectives/Background Venepuncture and PVC insertion are common procedures in Children’s ED and often include blood cultures. Opening a universal dressing pack (udp) including a plastic tray, sterile swabs, gloves and 2 plastic sterile field drapes (sfd) is common practice. Our department was making a huge spend on udp’s. We aimed to determine if this was necessary and if we could reduce our plastic waste.

Methods/Design A sample of 8 doctors across all grades demonstrated their set up for both procedures. We replaced udp in the IV trollies with x2 sfd pack (sfdp). Information was disseminated via weekly staff brief. Trollies are restocked each night using attached flashcards which were updated appropriately. The use and costs of dressing packs in ED was determined for April-June 2019. We planned to compare this for April-June 2020.

Results/Conclusions All clinicians were opening a dressing pack for procedures but 87.5% only used the sfd and swabs. 100% discarded gloves due to inappropriate size and 100% discarded the tray. All staff adopted the new equipment with no problems identified. 3500 udps were being used in dept in 3 months. Udp v sfdp per item costs 32p v 8p, weight 65 g v 30 g. Due to CoVID-19 pandemic the number of ED attendances significantly reduced therefore costs were based on 2019 usage. In 3 months switching from udp to sfd would save £840 and 122.5 kg of refuse weight. Volumes of stocks were reduced from 0.05 m² to 0.01 m² for 50 udp v 50 sfdp which aids storage and restocking of IV trollies releasing staff time.

We demonstrated a significant reduction in unnecessary plastic waste while also reducing costs and need for storage and restocking whilst maintaining safe practice. This has been rolled out in the neighbouring Clinical Decision Unit with anticipation of being a permanent change in both areas.