Gold Award for Trust’s Vascular Access Improvement Group

The Vascular Access Improvement Group (VAIG) were recently awarded the Infection Prevention Society Impact Gold Award (Patient Safety) for their commitment to reducing the risk of line-associated infections and improving the quality of vascular access care.

Patients in our care may need to have a vascular access procedure to insert a thin plastic tube (line) into a vein to deliver medication, such as chemo or nutrition over a period of weeks or months. With this procedure there is a risk for an infection to develop inside or around the place the line is inserted.

To minimise the risk of infection, VAIG was set up around 2 years ago to develop a line infection surveillance system, working together with teams across the trust to standardise practice and increase training for all staff involved in line care.

The first task of the group was to establish an audit of vascular access related practices and improve data collection - this would provide a baseline that could be used to measure the quality of the service being provided including infection rate.

The group have seen improvement with results showing infection rate (per 1000 “Catheter days”) is now 0.8% for 2022/23 and the number of patient reviews increasing from 61 (2020/21) to 1264 (2022/23).?

Simon Wells, Lead Nurse for Infection Prevention and Control said, ‘much of the success of this project has been due to bringing together teams and departments including the Vascular Access Service, Clinical Skills, ICU, Renal Services and Infection Prevention Control. ?We have also engaged with individual care groups and practice educators to help support the education programme and ensure consistent care is delivered within the organisation.’

At the trust we now have 4 highly trained specialist nurses who can carry out the vascular access procedure for patients and a robust surveillance system to identify potential line infections. When a line associated infection is diagnosed, the system ensures an appropriate investigation is completed involving relevant specialties who manage and insert vascular access devices.

Dr Iyer, Consultant Microbiologist says, ‘We are really proud to be recognised for this award. Lines in patients are literally their lifeline - keeping someone alive either through delivering vital medication or nutrition and is integral to patients’ wellbeing. The Vascular Access team through the improvement programme has been able to give patients better care, as the line surveillance supports data-driven improvements in line-care thereby enabling patients to keep lines in for longer, rather than removing and repeating the procedure every couple of days.’