Hello all
I am in the process (very long, tortuous process) of trying to develop a Vascular Access Team. We currently do what I call a "PICC and Run" model. That is we place PICC's, get a confirmation XRAY and then never see the patient again. I want to develop an ownership method where we follow the PICC's (and all CVL's) till discharge and then interface with home health or nursing homes if needed. We are running numbers to know how many FTE's our team will require. Does anyone have a formula or guideline for how much time is spent on a daily Central Line assessment. My idea is that each line gets an eyeball every day, dressing change every 7days (or as needed) and a full chart review (labs, xray, MAR,). We are thinking 15minutes per line for the assessment and an additional 5 for dressing changes. I need to start somewhere to calculate our FTE request.
Thoughts?
If you have a team like this, how much time do you allow per CVL?
Martha
Martha
My hospital has a Vascular Access Team. There are 11 of us and our main function is to put in PICCs and to care and monitor all central lines in the hospital. We average 50 lines everyday. There are PICCs we put in, PICCs from other hospitals and all the lines put in my physicians. We see all the lines twice a day, and change the dressings every 7 days or as needed. We have 24/7 coverage. We are a pediatric hospital so it probably takes us longer for dressing changes that on adults. It takes us an average of 30 min. per dressing change. Assessing takes only a couple of minutes. Alot of our time is taken up troubleshooting. We are also responsible for doing all repairs or unclotting of the lines. Sometimes this takes as much as 2 hours. Hope this helped.
Cindy
Cynthia Helton
We take about 15 minutes per pt daily (this includes assessing, flushing, checking for blood return, charting...) If we do a dressing change, we give ourselves 30 minutes.
mahalo
I actually work with VADnurse and the above minutes listed is the standard at the hospital we both work at. In terms of PICC insertions, we give ourselves approximately 240 minutes: no complications, PICC went in smoothly, and no adjustments made. We add more minutes for adjustments or if radiology took a while to shoot the xray or report the tip location to us.
We also coordinate with a home health agency that is trained with PICC dressings and trouble shooting. If needs be, we do a dressing change prior to the patient's discharge. Once the patient is discharged, however, we are no longer liable for the patient unless they are readmitted to the hospital with their PICC.
240 minutes=4 hours.....Seems like a long time for routine PICC insertion
Miust be a typo.....120 minutes=2 hours is more realistic
Robbin George RN VA-BC