Presented by Celeste Dealino-Perez, Perioperative NPD Practitioner OR/Pre-op & PACU, VHA-CT Veterans Healthcare System and Denise Ormrod, MSN, BS, RN, VHA-CM, Nurse Manager OR/Pre-op & PACU, VHA-CT Veterans Healthcare System
The VACT PACU Nursing PICC Team is a nurse-led initiative started after identifying the need to decrease the wait times for PICC line insertions and decrease the in-patient length of stay.
To improve the veteran patients’ satisfaction and flow, the PACU nurses trained and were the point of care provider versus the interventional radiologist, utilizing the unit down times to place PICC lines for the veterans. Before its inception, the average wait time from consult to PICC insertion was 3.2 days. It decreased to 0.5 days and grew significantly with the increased number of Veteran patients served (n= 1,627 from 2011-2022).
The most significant benefit is the $4 Million approximate return of investment cumulatively and continues to be the nursing gold standard of practice.
