Vascular nursing team improve patient care

Vascular patients at UHNM are being treated and discharged more quickly, thanks to the innovative work of the specialist nursing team. The team have created a 'complex dressing clinic' to help facilitate a more timely discharge and patient flow within the surgical division. The initiative has helped to save more than £40,000 and contributed to successful patient discharges.

Jenna Campbell-Baddeley, Vascular CNS support nurse, said: "Most NHS trusts face continual challenges with bed management, which puts increased pressure on emergency departments and services. To help this issue we created our clinic. We audited our experience of the clinic to assess if we had managed to save inpatient hospital stays and we found that we had. Our findings were that a vascular complex dressing clinic is beneficial to the patient pathway and has a cost saving benefit to the trust. Patients who are medically fit for discharge and are awaiting tissue viability or district nursing service input to support their wound care are eligible."

Jenna was invited to present the team's work at the Society for Vascular Nursing's (SVN) Annual Scientific Meeting, held recently in Manchester.