PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

By Julie King, RN, CRNI

My focus for my four years of Presidency for the Maryland Chapter of INS has been education. I have a strong belief that if I want to call myself a “Specialist” in my field, I must be willing to educate others. I need to share my knowledge and my support with all nurses who care for patients who need IV access and/or IV infusions. Now days, all nurses are IV nurses. IV Teams may be a distant memory, but the skills and expertise of IV nurses is desperately needed.

It is a very tough time in nursing and it has become clear that “Teamwork” is essential. Think about how upsetting it is when you place an IV after a few attempts only to discover that it is somehow lost soon after placement. Can you feel the patient’s and nurse’s frustration after taking an hour or more to place a PICC line only to find out that it is clotted or damaged in someway only a day or so later? Do you see too many peripheral IV sites that last hours instead of days or PICCs that last days instead of weeks? I know I do. 

The nurse who places the line educates the alert patient to the best of his/her ability when the line is placed. We hope that the patient can help with the care of the line to preserve the access. We even discuss the access and the potential problems for maintaining the line with the staff hoping that they too will assist in preserving the access. Unfortunately, that is often where the education stops. 

I have decided that my best friends are the Case Managers (CM) and Social Workers (SW) who coordinate patient care. Include them in your education process. Especially when midline, PICC line, and all other types of central line care is involved. The CM/SW are like the coach on a football team. They often know the plan of care and know all the players and do the best job coordinating the plan of action. After many years of IV therapy, it was not until five years ago I learned that no vascular access Nurse can live without a great relationship with the CM/SW, especially when PICC lines are involved.  

Educating the CM/SW about PICC and midlines, their uses and differences, as well as the potential concerns for the care of the patient with one of these lines, made a huge difference in the catheter’s length of stay. We shared with them what the process for line placement should include and concurrently, we learned what they needed to help us meet long term placement goals. It has been a relationship made in heaven. 

However, that was not the final story. If we expected our PICC/midlines to remain healthy for the duration ordered, we had to discuss PICC care with the physical therapy department, nurse tech and even the physicians. We had to educated the physical therapist how to walk the patient with a PICC, the nurse tech how to turn a patient with a PICC and the physician how and when to order a PICC appropriately. Anyone who comes in contact with a patient who has a PICC or midline can contribute to achieving the projected placement time if educated properly.  

As long as my Presidency with INS continues, I will continue to hope that all nurses who join our Chapter walk away with new information to improve all the IV care in their area of nursing. I am especially concerned about the long-term lines we place. The indwell time of what should be a long-term catheter depends on how well we educate the person with the line in their body and each-and-every person who comes in contact with that patient and their line.  

That is what the Maryland Chapter of the Infusion Nurses Society is all about. EDUCATION! Network with those who desire the education as well as those who desire to share the information. SO… COME ONE COME ALL… If you desire to know or desire to share… join us once a month to network and exchange knowledge. You and your patients will be better for it.  Your knowledge is exactly what we are looking for. Share it with all of us.  

Visit the other links on our web page. If there is something you would like to see on the web page or you have information to share on the page, please email me at iveynursejs@hotmail.com. Put in the subject of the email “INS Chapter business” so it does not get lost in other emails. Your communication is important to me.

Please report any broken links, problems, or comments regarding this site to the webmaster.