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Lowcountry AHEC Supports IV Therapy Provision with Training

While the placement of an intravenous line in healthcare is often routine, a practice or facility’s ability  to offer IV therapy to patients provides many benefits to the patient and the practice. To that end, Lowcountry AHEC offered an “Introduction to IV Therapy” continuing professional development course in January to healthcare professionals, including nurses from Methodist Oaks Retirement Community and surgical assistants from Mooresville Oral Surgery.

Taught by 2014 SC AHEC Educator of the Year Wilma Rice, MSN, RN, CEN, the course covered best practice guidelines as well as demonstrations. Participants then completed a skills demonstration to assess what they learned.

Methodist Oaks Retirement Community is a continuing care retirement community in Orangeburg that provides independent living, assisted living and skilled nursing care. The facility is planning to increase the availability of IV services for the community and will permit IV insertions, maintenance, and treatment in their rehabilitation department. Nurses from Methodist Oaks participated in the January training, as well as attended an additional IV therapy course held in December. Their goal is to have all nurses confident in the initiation as well as maintenance of an IV.  

Mooresville Oral Surgery in North Carolina is preparing their surgical assistants to initiate IV access so the surgeon can administer moderate sedation for patients. This improves the practice’s workflow to free up additional time for consultations or post-operative assessments, as well as providing the surgeon with additional time to complete other clinical responsibilities. After the skills portion of the program, surgical assistant Amy Hecker explained what it was like learning to initiate IV access, “I’ve never been more scared, yet excited to see red!”  

To learn more about Lowcountry AHEC continuing professional development programming, visit the Lowcountry AHEC website.

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