EAST NORRITON>> Are you a needle-phobic type?
Is your fear based on the difficult time nurses invariably have trying to zone in on a vein in your arm to stick the needle into?
Sometimes it can take them more than one attempt to get the needle or intravenous line (IV) in where it’s supposed to go, and that’s a distressful experience for both you and the nurse.
Einstein Medical Center Montgomery patients are breathing easier these days since a “magic wand” called AccuVein arrived at the East Norriton facility that makes all the anxiety instantly disappear.
AccuVein, a wand which uses the magic of infrared technology to make veins easily visible, has been a boon to patient care, explained chief nursing officer AnnMarie Papa.
“Needle sticks and IV are really something that most every patient fears,” Papa said. “There’s actually research out there that shows that patients often fear the needle stick or the needle or the IV more than they fear the surgery. And having something like this where our patients can actually see that we can see where the vein is, it makes them feel that we have a better chance of hitting the vein, especially patients who are what we call a difficult stick. Some patients absolutely don’t need the AccuVein – there’s a huge vein sticking out, and that’s great. But we have a lot of frail elderly patients and patients who are compromised because of being diabetic and things like that, and we use this on them. We have nurses with patients who have a high level of anxiety with regard to a needle stick,” Papa added. “I want to do everything I can to help them alleviate that fear and have them have confidence in us as providers. It’s also distressing for nurses when they miss an IV because that could set up a negative relationship with their patient, who may judge them on whether or not they can get an IV in.”
Papa became acquainted with the device while working at a different hospital, she recalled.
“I worked emergency department before administration for many years, and when we brought it in to Philly I saw the success, and when I came here as the chief nurse I went to our Chief Operating Officer about it, because it was not something we had in our budget. She actually agreed, and that’s what we did.”
Larry Darnell, who operates the Audubon-based independent medical sales firm Darnell Medical, said that AccuVein is easily the most phenomenal product he’s sold in his 30 years in the industry.
“I’ve never had a product that you just walk in and demonstrate for 10 seconds and people just say ‘Wow.’ Accuvein is a product I heard about from someone in the Midwest.”
It took him about a year to nail down the distributorship rights, Darnell recalled.
“I was really hoping to get it because you can sell to a lot hospitals and within the first 10 seconds of showing someone they get the usefulness of it for benefitting patients. I was at Hershey Medical Center recently and showed it to a few people there, and I turned around and there were four people waiting to give blood in the lab and they all had their arms out, saying ‘I’m a very difficult stick, can you show me how this thing works?’ It was really comical.”
Darnell explained in non-technical terms how AccuVein manages to amaze observers every time: “It’s a low-level infrared device that actually lights the hemoglobin and that brings out the deoxygenated blood. So when you turn this on you’re only seeing the veins, not arteries or nerves. It’s a skill getting an IV into a vein, and some people are difficult sticks … they just don’t have veins that appear as readily as other people. My daughter is a nurse at Johns Hopkins and she’s educated me to this. The elderly, people undergoing chemo, diabetics, sometimes pediatric patients – there are a lot of people where they have difficulty picking up a good vein to get a line in.”
Other facilities that Darnell has sold the device to include Mercy Suburban Hospital, Chester County Hospital, Chestnut Hill Hospital and Abington Memorial Hospital.
“I give AnnMarie a lot of credit for bringing AccuVein to Einstein Montgomery; they have six of them, one in every unit,” Darnell said. “What’s driving the interest in the device is the HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems), which is a detailed survey that patients fill out about their satisfaction with a hospital when they leave. Part of a hospital’s reimbursement from the government is based on how positively patients score the hospital, so patient satisfaction is really driving a lot of health care these days. Hospitals are really under the gun to provide better service and provide a better patient experience. The AccuVein helps,” he added, ” because there’s nothing worse for a patient than going into a hospital and it takes them three sticks to put an IV in or they have difficulty drawing blood.”
Papa noted that all the nurses at Einstein Medical Center Montgomery are delighted to have the device to use on a regular basis.
“Even the ones who’ve been putting IVs in for a long time are really thrilled,” she said. “Anything we can do as an organization to minimize our patients’ anxiety is something we should do. For a community hospital to make this commitment to our patients is a fabulous thing.”
Darnell Medical can be reached at DarnellMedical@Comcast.net.
