Sydney Liver Clinic Introduces Ultrasound Guidance for Difficult Venous Access
Watch and learn as clinicians and patients tell their stories about Liverpool Hospital's DiVA Pathway success with improving patient confidence and care outcomes.
The clinical challenge: Many outpatient liver clinic patients presented non-visible or non-palpable veins, often resulting in multiple attempts to collect simple blood tests, causing patient anxiety and high pain scores. This meant patients often did not show up for treatment. The clinic needed a solution that minimised collection attempts and gained patients confidence in pain-free blood collection.
The solution: The liver clinic approached the hospital’s Central Venous Access Service, where in 2015, clinical lead Evan Alexandrou and his team developed the Difficult Venous Access Pathway (DiVA) to solve multiple cannulation attempts on inpatients with difficult venous access. The Pathway centred on ultrasound guidance utilising Sonosite SII point-of-care ultrasound systems. Could the success of the DiVA Pathway translate to liver clinic patients by utilising ultrasound-guidance for simple blood draws?
The results: With a 99% first-stick pass rate, as well as the world’s best procedural outcomes for central venous access, the DiVA Pathway is now policy within Liverpool Hospital. And, as word spread about the Pathway’s success, additional hospitals began adopting ultrasound-guided vascular access to improve patient satisfaction and outcomes.