When we look at best practice, improving patient outcomes, implementing evidenced based protocols in the insertion, care and maintenance of vascular access devices, we have to look at nurses to be the leaders. Nurses are becoming the coordinators, leaders, teachers, educators, on topics related to vascular access devices. The nurse who cares for the patient with a device needs to know what brand of device, how to care for the device and how to teach the patient about their device. Educating teams of nurses to become the experts in this field is a goal all hospitals and home health agencies need to implement. Devices range from the PIV to the CVC, from tunneled to non tunneled, from trimmed to non trimmed, from CT injectable to non CT injectable. How is the staff nurse who cares for this patient to know all this? Most often they do not, and find themselves feeling inadequate, trying to find someone to help them or going to the Internet to locate the information they need to provide patient care. When we have a team of nurses who can educate nurses and be available to the nurse and patient, then we increase patient satisfaction scores, improve paint outcomes and are implementing best practice.
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