Q
& A
Nurses Raising Awareness About the
Need for Vascular Access Specialists and
Expert Teams in Hospitals: A Q&A
With Constance Girgenti and Sheri Pieroni
By Kelly M. Pyrek
C
Vascular
access
specialists
make a crucial
contribution
to maintaining
safe staffing
by allowing
highly skilled
bedside
nurses to
focus on
patient care
instead of
being called
away to
assist with
intravenous
access.”
32
hicago-area vascular access specialists
Constance Girgenti, BSN, RN, VA-BC, and
Sheri Pieroni, BSN, RN, VA-BC, are on a mission
to raise the profile of nurses who are specially
trained in the placement, maintenance, education,
problem solving and removal of vascular access
devices, as a means to boost patient safety and
comfort, and avoid adverse events. They have
witnessed patients being treated as human pin
cushions once too many, and believe they are
being subjected to unnecessary pain and infection
risk. The better approach is for a vascular access
specialist/coordinator to handle all vascular access
device-care responsibilities.
Girgenti and Pieroni are among many nurses
who believe vascular access specialists and/or
teams should be placed in every hospital across
the U.S. Their passion about this safety initiative
was so great that last June, this nursing duo gen-
erated a petition signed by more than a thousand
people to legislators at the 2019 American Nurses
Association Hill Day in Washington, D.C. where
they explained the necessity of VA specialists to
U.S. Reps. Bill Foster and Jan Schakowsky.
“Vascular access specialists make a crucial
contribution to maintaining safe staffing by
allowing highly skilled bedside nurses to focus
on patient care instead of being called away to
assist with intravenous access,” Girgenti had
emphasized in a statement last year. “Americans
for Vascular Access Specialists in Every Hospital is
a public call to action to improve health outcomes
for millions of patients.”
Every day, more than 590,000 patients are
hospitalized and 98 percent of them will need a
vascular access device. Most of these devices are
peripheral intravenous (PIV) catheters, which cost
anywhere from $28 to $35 per attempt to place.
This is in addition to the need for advanced device
placement, such as midlines, PICCS and CVCs in
critically ill patients.
According to Girgenti, patients commonly
receive multiple needlestick attempts --sometimes
as many as 10 or more when they go to a hospital
for treatment. In addition to pain and suffering,
the failed attempts can lead to subsequent
complications including bloodstream infections,
which impact patient outcomes and increase
costs. “Every patient should only have to endure
one stick when they arrive at the hospital and a
specially trained inserter can do that more than
95 percent of the time,” she said.
Vascular access specialists work with other
clinicians to place the right device for each patient,
taking into consideration factors like health history,
medication, and how long the device will be
used. The goal is one patient, one device. Their
knowledge and assessment skills are also applied
to care, maintenance, and troubleshooting the
devices to avoid complications.
“We want to drive legislative change that will
improve the hospital care received by millions of
Americans every day, one stick for all patients
from first time mothers to preterm infants to
terminal cancer patients,” said Pieroni in last
year’s statement.
PIV failures can be as high as 63 percent, mainly
due to unskilled general nurses placing them
without ultrasound guidance. Some hospitals have
begun to build vascular access teams and improve
these outcomes, while others are unaware of the
ordeal some patients endure with vascular access.
Healthcare Hygiene magazine spoke with
Girgenti and Pieroni about renewed efforts to
raise awareness of the value of VA specialists, and
their intentions to keep campaigning on Capitol
Hill this spring and summer.
february 2020 • www.healthcarehygienemagazine.com