Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Life sometimes creates interesting confluences, and these should not be ignored. I was the Chair who sat on the other side of the desk during the job interview of the author of this remarkable essay. ⋯ This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
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This is a prospective before-after study comparing peripheral intravenous cannulation (PIVC) placement and usage rates following a 10-week-long multimodal intervention provided to medical and nursing staff working in a tertiary emergency department (ED). The intervention focused on improving appropriate use of PIVCs in an emergency setting by emphasizing to clinicians that a PIVC should only be placed if it was believed there was more than an 80% chance that it would be used. ⋯ Patients were excluded from the study if they were triage category 1, already had a PIVC placed in an ambulance, or were transferred from another hospital. Among the 4,172 patients included in the analysis, there was a 9.8% reduction in the number of PIVCs inserted (95% confidence interval [CI] = 6.8-12.87) and a 12% increase in PIVC usage (95% CI = 8.7%-17.0%) in the postintervention cohort.