Our practice council (just in our department - I've made them aware that this needs to be a hospital wide decision including quality, risk management, infection prevention, med exec, etc.) is investigating changing our policy to clinically indicated PIV removal.
We are one of the few full service IV teams (mostly full service - staff RNs do blood transfusions and chemo).
Staff IV RNs are concerned that our department will have a RIF if we don't have routine peripheral IV starts on our to do list.
My answer - instead of getting rid of staff, we should be allocating those resources to daily rounds and education. Our hospital is a Level I academic trauma center, and our department has already proved itself as a leader in guiding best practice around vascular access. Also - even though I don't believe that we'll have an RIF if we move to this policy, we should be practicing best practice for best patient care, not tailoring policy around staffing fears.
Thoughts? I can contact Claire Rickard directly, but I'm interested if anyone on this forum has experience with this issue.
Thanks in advance,
Mari Cordes, BS RN, VA-BC