This 4-hour workshop provides small group, hands-on learning with clinical experts to advance infusion therapy practice in various care settings. During this workshop, you will explore vascular access options for patients with urgent, emergent, and long-term access needs. You will learn how to select the right device for each clinical situation using the latest innovations in both intraosseous (IO) and intravenous access. Additionally, you will explore anatomical characteristics of the vasculature using ultrasound guidance during vascular access procedures. At the conclusion of this workshop, you will be able to articulate best practices for determining infusion access choice (vascular or IO), for insertion, for care and management, and for device salvage.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this workshop, the learner will:

1.    Describe vascular access device selection for the right patient at the right time.

2.    Outline device options for vascular access in emergent, urgent, and long-term medically necessary situations.

3.    Explore veins and other anatomical characteristics/surrounding structures (nerves, arteries) when selecting a site for device insertion.

4.    Discuss guidelines for ultrasound use during vascular access procedures.

Contact Hours: 4
CRNI® RUs: 8

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Infusion nurses face many challenges while caring for a wide variety of patients including those in acute and critical care units, those being treated intermittently in outpatient settings, and those receiving long-term care. In providing treatment nurses frequently witness suffering and observe the stress their colleagues experience. The nature of this work puts them at risk of experiencing moral distress. It is important to identify, prevent when possible, and treat moral distress so that nurses can provide the best care to their patients and be mutually supportive of their coworkers.  This session will explore the impact of moral distress on infusion nurses and ways to minimize its negative effect.  

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to: 

• Define moral distress.
• Characterize the unique circumstances that challenge nurses in their practice that lead to moral distress.
• List the numerous difficult decisions that nurses make in their practice.
• Describe the potential negative outcomes of moral distress on patient care and nurses psychological state (state of well-being).
• Discuss the interventions that nurses and organizations can use to prevent or minimize work related stressors. 

Contact Hours: 1
CRNI® RUs: 2

Intravenous smart pumps (IVSP) are widely used to care for acutely ill patients, yet the most commonly used models heavily depend on bedside setup for accurate intravenous (IV) medication dosing. The practice of moving IVSP outside of patient rooms became a common practice during the COVID-19 pandemic to improve clinician workflow and safety. Yet the implications for the accuracy of IV medication administration were not considered. This session will present important concepts that are imperative for infusion nurses to understand to improve the safety and accuracy of IV medication administration.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to: 

1. Describe IVSP setup requirements and implications for the safest and most accurate IVSP use.
2. Evaluate how the IVSP setup impacts flow rate accuracy and prepare to adjust practice to improve patient safety.
3. Describe how IVSP use outside of patient rooms impacts IV medication administration.

Contact Hours: 1
CRNI® RUs: 2

Half of adults undergoing placement of a VAD report significant pain and distress during the insertion procedure. Despite this, inserters do not consistently utilized strategies to minimise procedural pain. Moreover, few reliable instruments measuring outcomes and experiences related to VAD insertion are available. An emerging evidence base exists regarding strategies to address this aspect of vascular access care to measure and improve the patient experience, but targeted research efforts in this area are still needed to ensure high-quality care. This session will present the consumer voice of procedural pain during VAD insertion, explore the evidence base around pain management during VAD placement in adults, and discuss clinical practice recommendations and research priorities in this area.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to: 

1. Describe the patient perspective of pain and discomfort during VAD insertion.
2. Discuss evidence-based pain management strategies during VAD insertion in adults.
3. Explain strategies and interventions to manage insertion related pain and discomfort. 
4. Discuss priorities and recommendations for future research regarding pain and discomfort during VAD insertions with adult patients.

Contact Hours: 1
CRNI® RUs: 2

The current clinical provision of vascular access device procedures is largely shared amongst a variety of health care disciplines. Consistently, a synthesis of evidence and clinical studies on various vascular access devices report unacceptable outcomes for patients undergoing these procedures. Despite widespread use in hospitals and community settings, a dedicated vascular access specialist team (VAST) may not be the most effective process for device insertion, management, and governance. This presentation will highlight the importance of VASTs and the importance of trusted evidence to implement a team within a variety of health care settings globally. It will challenge the assumption that omnipresent vascular access teams in health care are effective, argue for better evidence, and identify the opportunities that exist for VAST to disrupt and innovate using an evidence-based approach. 

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, participants will:

1. Describe the complexity of vascular access and why a team approach is required. 
2. Name types of evidence that support vascular access team approaches.  
3. Verbalize the potential for the vascular access specialist team entity in health care and how they could assist with evidence generation for clinical guidelines.

Contact Hours: 1
CRNI® RUs: 2

COVID-19 had significant negative impacts on healthcare associated infections (HAIs) incidence across the country. Practices changed in most organizations to address struggles with staffing, personal protective equipment shortages, and supply chain disruption. While COVID-19 cases have declined, some practices have been slow to return to baseline. This session will review areas that may still be increasing risk to patients along with recommendations for identifying and prioritizing opportunities for improvement.  

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to: 

• Discuss the impact of COVID-19 on HAIs.
• Reflect on the changes to the provision of care that occurred in response to COVID-19 surges.
• Propose an assessment of current practices for return to baseline.
• Consider mitigation approaches for escalating prevention efforts and improving patient safety.

Contact Hours: 1
CRNI® RUs: 2

Hospitals are challenged to meet the IV therapy needs of a growing number of patients with difficult vascular access. Unnecessary and preventable peripheral intravenous catheter (PIVC) failure leads to device replacement, delays in essential treatments, repetitive and painful reinsertion procedures, and increased health care costs. To improve outcomes for patients with difficult IV access, should we challenge current norms by considering alternate devices, longer peripheral IV devices, and the standard use of highly skilled inserters? This presentation will provide an overview of recent research involving midline catheters (MCs), long PIVCs, and vascular access teams. It will include results from three randomised controlled trials (MCs versus PIVCs; MCs versus PICCs; and long versus short PIVCs) and literature summaries of vascular access teams and device failure associated with different types of peripheral IV devices.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to: 

1. Describe the potential benefits of long peripheral IV devices to patient’s vascular access outcomes.
2. Explain the complications associated with long PIVCs and MCs.
3. Discuss the potential benefits of vascular access teams in hospitals and the influence they have on the uptake of long PIVCs and MCs.
4. Discuss current literature on the use of MCs, long PIVCs, and specialized vascular access teams, identifying practice gaps and education priorities for further research. 

Contact Hours: 1
CRNI® RUs: 2

Multiple adalimumab biosimilars will be launching in 2023, and as biosimilar use increases in the United States, health systems and providers will encounter a new challenge: educating and switching their patients from reference product to biosimilar. Nurses play a vital role in educating patients and including them in the shared decision-making process.

This presentation will cover the basics of biosimilar development; key concepts including extrapolation, interchangeability, and immunogenicity; and clinical practice implications, including switching and the nocebo effect. There will be an overview of the disease states where biosimilars will enter the treatment landscape, along with a summary of the biosimilars landscape. Participants will build a foundation for biosimilar-related knowledge, applicable to their practice in multiple ways (especially for patient education and answering questions on switching when a biosimilar is prescribed).

CRNI® RUs: 2 

The purpose of the presentation is to provide an overview of iron deficiency anemia (IDA) and discuss treatment options with intravenous (IV) iron therapies. IDA is a form of anemia characterized by inadequate iron stores or low/no availability which leads to sub-optimal hemoglobin concentration and compromised RBC production. IDA is the most common type of anemia and affects approximately 5 million people living in the United States. Treatment options include oral and IV iron therapies. This presentation focuses on IV iron therapies and safety considerations such as hypersensitivity reactions (HSRs) and hypophosphatemia. In terms of HSRs, topics discussed include premedication, risk factors, identification, classification and management of hypersensitivity reactions. In terms of hypophosphatemia, topics discussed include the physiological importance of phosphate homeostasis, signs and symptoms, mechanism of action and the clinical data illustrating the incidence and reported clinical sequelae of hypophosphatemia.

CRNI® RUs: 2