Sammanfattning
The majority of hospitals have practice guidelines for when anaesthesia personnel may be
summoned for the placing of peripheral venous catheters (PVC). At the Sygehus Vendsyssel hospital,
PVC placement must first be attempted by nursing staff, then by a doctor, and subsequently
anaesthesia personnel may be summoned. This is the case regardless of how difficult PVC
placement is expected to be.
We have developed a new and more patient-centred set of PVC practice guidelines to take account of
the difficulty of needle placement in a given patient, matched with staff experience. The PVC practice
guidelines also include instruction in useful handling technique developed by nurse anaesthetists
with many years' experience. A clinically controlled pre- and post-study in a surgical unit comprising
a total of 189 patients revealed that training of nursing staff using our new PVC practice guidelines
improved the success rate of PVC placement and reduced the need to involve anaesthetists. In spite
of anaesthetists being involved far more frequently in PVC placement before the guidelines than
after, the improved success rate of the nursing staff was evidenced by a modest, but significant,
decrease in the average number of needlesticks received by the patients after the introduction of the
PVC guidelines.