Peripheral arterial sheath removal program: a performance improvement initiative.

The increasing number of endovascular procedures by both cardiologists and vascular surgeons strain available resources, such as recovery space, creating delays in the throughput of patients. The use of alternative settings, personnel, and approaches to postprocedural care has been proposed to maximize the number of procedures that can be done with existing procedure rooms. However, a key question remains about whether this can be done safely and achieve good patient outcomes. A performance improvement project was conducted to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of shifting postprocedural care and removal of intraarterial sheaths by the staff in the cardiac catheterization laboratory to specially trained acute care nurses on an inpatient vascular surgical unit. The purpose of this project was to develop a performance improvement project that included administrative, educational, and clinical components and to evaluate effects on key patient outcomes, prospectively, over 15 months.