Staff Education on Transradial Bands

Staff education has a significant impact on evidence-based practice and safe care. It is imperative for health professionals to be educated to deliver patient-centered care as members of an interdisciplinary team, emphasizing evidence-based practice, quality improvement approaches, and informatics. It is essential to employing evidence-based care. Failure to provide education can significantly hinder an organizations sustainability effort (Jeyakumar et. al., 2021). For these reasons, I have chosen to initiate a nursing education project. Working in the cardiovascular lab, I was able to identify a gap in practice when caring for patients after coronary angiography. The gap in practice was identified when a record number of complications with transradial bands (TR band) was recognized. It was noted to be a lack of education with the nurses caring for these patients. Increasing education and eliminating complications will lead to decreased post procedure bleeding and decreased length of stay in the hospital. My practice focused question is will educating nurses on caring for a transradial band reduce the number of complications. The purpose of this project is to increase the knowledge of caring for a patient with a TR band. The results of my education session were very enlightening. The pre-survey showed that only 22% of the nurses were confident in caring for the TR band and more than 50% of the nurses were not confident in removing the air from the band or receiving report. After the teaching, 86% of the nurses were comfortable with caring for patients with TR bands and 97% were comfortable with removing the air and receiving report. I feel the hands-on and returned demonstration of using the TR band had a significant impact on these results. This supports positive social change in our healthcare system.