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Vascular access nurse, Cathi tells us about her role

Hi, my name is Cathi and I’m the trusts vascular access nurse which means I have responsibility for monitoring the insertion and ongoing management of vascular access devices within Northumbria Healthcare.

I am based at The Northumbria Hospital but work across the whole trust, including our main hospitals and community settings. I first became interested in vascular access in 2009 when I was asked to carry out the annual central line audit on ITU. From then on, I was hooked and was fortunate enough to be able to develop expertise in this field whilst continuing to work as an infection control nurse.

In December 2019 I was employed as a dedicated vascular access nurse, the first of its kind at Northumbria Healthcare. I initially had great plans as to how I would introduce myself to staff, touring around the organisation and making sure everyone understood what my role entailed and how I could offer support, but then Covid arrived which made this difficult. Now I find my days are generally spent at The Northumbria Hospital but I am easily contactable by phone or email.

The main focus of my role is to help patients get the right type of vascular access device inserted at the right time, and to support staff to manage that device safely. There is nothing more rewarding than sorting out a blocked central line or accessing a patient’s port to avoid the need for them to be cannulated. I love the fact that I am able to support staff in managing patients with vascular access devices and that I can help improve a patient’s hospital stay as a result.

In my role I also enjoy teaching – sharing information in itself is great, but when you share information with willing participants it is even more rewarding. My biggest challenge at present is that there are not always enough hours in the day to allow me to do everything that I’d like to do but I suspect we all must feel like that at times.

My aspiration for the future is to work as part of a wider team implementing best practice pathways across the organisation to ensure we improve the experience of our patients with challenging veins and I look forward to continuing to support our patients with vascular access devices.