Are care bundles still relevant?

As IV access specialists we have a multitude of national and international guidelines and standards to advise us on best IV practice. It is easy for us to see why they are important and the difference good IV access can make for a patient.

However, IV access is not just practised by specialists; it is an essential skill carried out by a wide variety of health professionals. Engaging, educating and standardising practice in such a large workforce can have many problems. Individual clinicians may not have the time to stay up-to-date with the latest IV access literature and studies. So how can we, as specialists, make things easy for them?

One way of getting health professionals to adhere to best practice has been through the use of care bundles. The Institute for Health Improvement (2017) describes care bundles as a small, straightforward set of evidence-based interventions, for a defined patient population and care setting, which when implemented together will result in an improvement to patient outcomes.