Practice Catheter Ports

Here at ECPI University, we have all sorts of Manikins, Robots, and other Simulation equipment to allow our Health Science students to practice as much hands-on as possible before heading out to their clinical "Externship" sites.

For example, we have manikins with rubber skin that allow students to inject and draw fluids with needles.

One of our Medical Assisting (MA) Externship sites is Virginia Cancer Institute. The students who complete their externship there observe and participate in a wide variety of experiences that are unique based on the patients served. For these cancer patients’ care, one such technique involves providing treatments through a Catheter Port. A Catheter Port is essentially a long hollow plastic tube through which chemotherapy, blood transfusions, antibiotics, and intravenous fluids can be given. While this practice would be somewhat unusual in a typical medical office, it is common at Virginia Cancer Institute. To better prepare all of our students who may someday have an interest in working with Cancer patients, one of our faculty, Dr. Shethwala, had created supplementary instruction on the techniques used to treat patients using Catheter Ports.

The Moorefield campus recently installed a 3-D Printer for its Electronic Engineering Technology (EET) students and in examining the capabilities, another faculty member, Dr. Nussbaum and Dr. Shethwala came up with the innovative idea for the EET students to review the exact specifications used to manufacture the plastic Catheter Ports and create them for the MA students to use in practicing their skills. This collaborative learning experience allowed the EET students not only to create something by applying what they have learned in their program but to also expose them to seeing and understanding how their creation would actually be used, and in this case how a patient would benefit.

Students from both programs were able to have hands on application of the skills learned in their program and as an extension of that, also understand that they were, and always will be part of a collaboration among many individuals from many different disciplines in order to perform their duties and provide quality service/care to their patients/customers.

This Instructable teaches you how to make a variety of sizes of Catheter Port for 3D printing, and lets you get started modifying and creating more shapes, sizes, and configurations.

A Google image search provides a large variety of shapes and sizes of catheter ports, so we chose one, and used the dimensions to create a few prototypes.

We decided to use the free educational version of Fusion 360.

Here we started with a disk platform using the dimensions similar to those found on the internet.

The disk platform was important to attach to the manikin and so as not to leak fluid.

We tried several ways to make the shape of the Catheter Port body.

One of the students came up with the best way.

Draw a profile sketch freehand that roughly looked like our desired shape, and then size it using the dimensions similar to those found on the internet.

From there, we rotated the sketch around the axis of the disk to make a watertight seal.

The trickiest part was the tubing connector. We had several 3D printing "fails" where the connector was too thin and collapsed, to thick and didn't fit nylon tube, too low compromising the platform, and too high floating the connector off of the platform of the 3D printer (and the "raft") causing it to droop or fail.

Once we got the connector just right, we created several heights and widths of Catheter Port, and added the "just right" connector to them afterwards.

In this way, one 3D print job could create several versions of the same port.

Here are a few that were 3D printed, three still on their rafts, one removed from the raft, and two attached to the nylon tubing.

Also shown is Dr. Nussbaum demonstrating the raft removal process (go slowly!)

Here Dr. Shethwala shows the electronics students how the finished product will be used.

She has some suggestions for improvements, and the students gather the requirements under the watchful eye of Dr. Ng.

Dr. Shethwala demonstrated how the Practice Catheter Ports will be used in the classroom.

The student must feel for the port, insert the needle, inject or withdraw the fluid, and the faculty member must be able to observe the other end of the tubing to see that is has been done correctly.

After the Medical Assisting student get their hands on these practice catheter ports, they and their faculty have additional requirements.

Here instructor Butler is talking to the students about a Double Catheter Port, which looks like a figure 8 from above, and where one side is used to inject and also remove fluids, such as anti-coagulants to flush the vein, and the other side is used to inject medicines.

The electronics students are working on the next version based on these gathered requirements, using the collaboration features of Fusion 360 - so as to not remake any of the previous "fails!"

Attached are different file export formats of the finished product for you to edit and use.