We are pleased to announce the 12th Annual Conference will be held in Manchester on Thursday 6th & Friday 7th June 2024. The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Access All Areas – A new era for vascular access & IV therapy’.

Please follow this link to download the NIVAS infiltration and extravasation toolkit. This toolkit is intended to enable local services and healthcare organisations to implement polices, protocols and guidelines that will increase awareness about non-chemotherapy extravasations. The toolkit is a guide to help improve patient safety in IV therapy practice. There will a series of webinars in the coming months about the extravasations toolkit and how to implement it in your local organisation. There are also downloadable action cards and campaign posters to raise awareness about infiltration and extravasation which can be found here.

NIVAS is proud to launch its white paper on “The Benefits of a Nursing Led Vascular Access Service Team”. Ensuring safe vascular access is a fundamental part of the care of many hospital patients with up to 90% of inpatients requiring intravenous access for delivery of fluids, medication and/or blood sampling. Yet, there remains significant variation in the provision of vascular access services in the NHS resulting in longer hospital stays and an increased cost to the NHS. This white paper outlines a standardized structure and approach for the NHS to deliver vascular access services in every hospital.

A message from the Chair

I hope this message finds you and your services recovering well from the pandemic. I wanted to update you about some of the recent work NIVAS has been doing.

Before the pandemic NIVAS we starting to work on national guidelines for vascular access and IV therapy and the creation of a nationally accredited qualification for vascular access. I am very pleased to tell you the board has started working on these projects in earnest. We have completely mapped out the national guidelines and started to populate the data and evidence needed to produce these. These guidelines will form the basis of the content for the national vascular access qualification. This forms a 3 year plan to improve safety nationally in relation to IV therapy and vascular access practice.

NIVAS is still working hard to promote your interests nationally in relation to IV therapy and vascular access practice and will continue to do so. As you will know, procuring IV therapy and vascular access products has been a problem over the past few months with the most commonly used devices not being available via NHS supply chain. This shortage or devices such as cannula, venepuncture sets and 10ml saline ampules have made good practice in IV therapy and vascular access harder to maintain but not impossible thankfully. A couple of things to remember is that not all needle free connectors are Aurum glass syringe prefilled emergency drug compatible, NIVAS is still working with MHRA and NHS I/E. It important to be aware of issues like this because if your usually needle free connector becomes unavailable, care should be taken to replace it with a like for like product.

Welcome to NIVAS

Welcome to the website of NIVAS, the independent and multi-professional society specialising in vascular access and infusion therapies.

NIVAS is the first independent multi-professional society to be founded in the UK in this century. It is the new voice for all those involved in vascular access and infusion therapies. The society was founded in July 2009 in order to promote excellence in this specialised field of patient care. We believe that we can advance practice through communication, collaboration and education.

As infusion therapy and vascular access continues to evolve, there is a need, now more than ever, for a co-ordinated approach to practice amongst healthcare professionals across the UK. The formation of a society and an annual conference is vital to ensure success in the specialty and quality care for patients. NIVAS hopes to engage nurses, anaesthetists, radiologists, microbiologists, pharmacists and other health professionals involved in the insertion and management of vascular access and infusion therapy.

NIVAS recognises the important role that you as an individual can play in advancing this specialty and would encourage your involvement with the society.