Vascular Access Safety Listed in ECRI Top Ten

VASCULAR ACCESS SAFETY LISTED IN ECRI TOP 10

ECRI, the nation’s largest patient safety organization, listed peripheral vascular harm on its Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns for 2021, cautioning healthcare leaders that severe cases of injury and infection can lead to extended lengths of stay and antibiotic treatments—even death. ECRI’s annual Top 10 list helps organizations identify imminent patient safety challenges and offers suggestions and resources for addressing them. This Top 10 report highlights patient safety concerns across the continuum of care because patient safety strategies increasingly focus on collaborating with other provider organizations, community agencies, patients or residents, and family members. Each patient safety concern on this list may affect more than one setting and involve a wide range of personnel. According to ECRI’s report, the challenge of an effective PIVC harm prevention program is to reduce the rate of PIVC infections as much as possible given a specific patient population. An ECRI and the Institute for Safe Medication Practices Patient Safety Organization (PSO) analysis of 27,320 reports of PIVC events found 6,119 reported infections and 21,201 non-infection all-harm events. ECRI recommends that a multidisciplinary effort involve leadership, those who allocate resources, infection control personnel, vascular access teams, those who insert and remove IVs, and patients themselves. To download ECRI’s Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns for 2021 report for free, visit https://www.ecri.org/ top-10-patient-safety-concerns-2021

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