Emergent Temporary Dialysis Catheter at the Bedside describes how a Vascular Wellness clinician placed a Vas-Cath at the Bedside in a critically ill patient in need of emergent dialysis when no transportation options were available, enabling prompt hemodialysis. Nurse Clinicians in Action is a spotlight series highlighting some of the interesting cases that Vascular Wellness clinicians have encountered and participated in treatment. These cases involve challenging situations or intriguing clinical presentations and may involve more than one Vascular Wellness clinician, as our clinicians have the ability to consult each other while in the field, as well as an on-call Clinical Administrator via a HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability) compliant communication app. In addition, our extensive training program and diverse client base, including Level 1 Trauma Centers, Short Term Acute Care Hospitals, Long Term Acute Care Hospitals, and Skilled Nursing Facilities, provide our clinicians with a wide array of clinical experience and why we believe our clinicians, as a group, are the most experienced and best trained and supported vascular access clinicians.
Emergent Temporary Dialysis Catheter
– Clinical Case
This case took place in a hospital that partners with Vascular Wellness for standard and advanced vascular access services except for Temporary Dialysis Catheters, also referred to as Vas Caths, in which the hospital transports patients to an affiliated hospital with a full Interventional Radiology department. While a Vascular Wellness clinician was inserting a PICC line at the facility for a patient, another patient began to decline and urgently needed catheter placement to initiate dialysis. Unfortunately, due to a bed shortage at the affiliated hospital, the patient could not be transferred to Interventional Radiology for the placement of a dialysis catheter. With the patient’s health rapidly deteriorating, the facility had to find a solution quickly.
Emergent Temporary Dialysis Catheter
– Diagnosis and Treatment
Realizing that central line access for a Vas Cath was critical to this patient, and because the facility was familiar with the level of expertise of the Vascular Wellness clinicians, they approached the Vascular Wellness clinician onsite and requested assistance. The facility asked if they could quickly credential the clinician to perform the highly advanced nursing procedure at the patient’s bedside. A call was placed to the Vascular Wellness 24/7 Vascular Support Team, who immediately understood the urgency of the situation and quickly supplied the facility with the clinician’s competencies with respect to Temporary Dialysis Catheters. The hospital approved the credentialing for the placement of this Large Bore Line, allowing the vascular access expert clinician to assist the patient. The Vascular Wellness clinician reviewed the patient’s medical history to verify there weren’t any contraindications, quickly assessed the patient’s vasculature utilizing ultrasound guidance, and placed a right internal jugular temporary dialysis catheter on the first attempt. Soon after, the patient began to receive the much-needed hemodialysis treatment.
Vascular Access Experts
– Key Points
This case clearly demonstrates how a Vascular Wellness clinician, a Vascular Access Expert credentialed and skill-verified in the placement of innovative advanced lines, including temporary dialysis, was able to provide immediate vascular access services to an existing client’s patient, resulting in life-saving therapy. Although the facility was not using Vascular Wellness for large bore dialysis catheter placement at the time, they quickly learned that partnering with Vascular Wellness affords a value-added, patient-centered, sustainable solution when compared with the potential uncertainty of relying on a separate hospital’s availability to provide similar medical services. The agility of the partnership allowed Vascular Wellness and the hospital to provide prompt treatment improving the patient outcome, reducing the risk of complications and saving on transportation expenses.
Further, Vascular Wellness takes credentialing very seriously and maintains updated information on every nurse clinician, enabling it to supply the requested credentialing information immediately, or as may be requested by the Joint Commission. Using W-2 nurse employees, Vascular Wellness maintains control over credentialing and skillsets, ensuring quality, reliability, and consistency for every client and patient, providing its clients an advantage over a 1099 contractor model.
In addition, we provide our client partners with a dedicated professional team of vascular access experts who are trained, precepted, and certified in the placement of standard and advanced lines at the patient’s bedside. We arrive onsite, generally within three hours, with all the necessary equipment to perform vascular access procedures, whether it’s placing a standard or advanced line. Our value-added vascular access services support your facility by avoiding unnecessary transportation costs, utilizing your medical resources efficiently, and delivering faster, safer therapy to your patient’s bedside. In addition, we promote teamwork internally and externally by either becoming an extension of your in-house team or operating as your outsourced provider, and all of our services are customized to meet our client’s needs. Superior client services are an essential component of our partnerships, and our expert clinicians function as a bridge among all stakeholders, the patient, their family members, and the medical team, as in this instance.
Because we have earned the trust of many doctors, our Vascular Access Expert Team is frequently contacted by doctors who defer to our recommendations by ordering a “consult” before a specific line which is not done with a typical Mobile PICC Line Services company. Vascular access is an invasive procedure. Patient safety and the preservation of the patient’s vascular anatomy are vital to optimal patient outcomes. That is why we conduct independent, comprehensive evaluations of every patient. You may find other companies asserting that they’re Vascular Access Experts, unfortunately, do not follow the same safety protocol. We deeply care about our patients and strive to develop partnerships that benefit and advance healthcare, which is why, as demonstrated in this case, our client quickly trusted us to evaluate the patient and provide a crucial, invasive, medical procedure, without the typical lengthy administrative process.
If you require Vascular Access or want to learn more, speak to the team at Vascular Wellness today. For the latest articles and insights, follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.
Vascular Wellness Serves North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. Expanding to Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.
Vascular Wellness provides:
(1) Comprehensive vascular access services to North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia;
(2) Customized vascular access services to Tennessee and Georgia; and
(3) Support vascular access services to Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky
