Cambridge University Hospital Trust (CUH) became a VTE exemplar centre in 2010, this coincided with the new nationally-mandated Quality Requirements, with associated financial consequences, being introduced in relation to VTE assessment (previously a national CQUIN indicator) in the NHS Standard Contract. I commenced my role as an anticoagulant specialist nurse just after this in 2011 so was involved in the revalidation as a VTE exemplar center in 2014 and 2017. VTE prevention at CUH has always been a team effort, taken on by the anticoagulant service. The team monitor VTE risk assessment compliance across the Trust, help to maintain VTE awareness as well as identify and review cases of hospital associated thrombosis.
As a Trust we initially incorporated the VTE risk assessment into the paper adult drug prescription and administration record with great success. Then in 2014, with the introduction of full electronic medical records the VTE risk assessment was written into the patient admission process and linked directly to the electronic medicines administration record. Since the introduction of mandatory VTE risk assessment, after a few hic ups along the way, we have consistently managed to risk asses more than 96% of all our adult inpatients.
We have faced challenges along the way; one of the biggest has been ensuring that VTE awareness remains a high profile patient safety issue. One way to tackle this issue was to recruit a robust network of VTE champions across all clinical areas of the Trust. We liaise regularly with the VTE champions, providing training, study days, a monthly report of their clinical areas VTE risk assessment compliance and information regarding any hospital associated thrombosis.
Another way to spread the message of VTE importance has been to include it as our chief nurses message of the week, provide reports for the daily email update’s that go out across the Trust, feature in the patient safety ‘hot spot’ message updates and also have a feature in the local newspaper.
Another way to spread the message of VTE importance has been to include it as our chief nurses message of the week, provide reports for the daily email update’s that go out across the Trust, feature in the patient safety ‘hot spot’ message updates and also have a feature in the local newspaper.
