Stop Starting with the Solution: What Better NHS Improvement Looks Like

A familiar pattern repeats across the NHS. Something is not working well enough. A solution is chosen, often the same kind of solution that was tried last time, and it is rolled out. Some time later, the problem is still there, or a new one has appeared in its place.

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A clinician wearing a blue non-sterile glove taking a blood sample from a patient's arm.

UK Infection Societies' Glove Use Position Statement: What It Means for Vascular Access Practice

The UK's leading infection societies, the British Infection Association, Healthcare Infection Society and Infection Prevention Society, have jointly issued a national position statement on glove use in health and social care. Published in Clinical Infection in Practice in July 2026, the statement sets out where gloves are genuinely needed, where they are not, and why overuse can undermine rather than protect patient safety.

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What WoCoVA Reminded Us About Vascular Access Practice

Conferences are full of excellent science. The harder question is always the same one: so what do we actually do with it on Monday morning? The recent World Congress on Vascular Access left us reflecting less on any single device or gadget and more on the whole pathway of care around the patient. Better vascular access is rarely about one thing.

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A VeinTrain educator demonstrating clinical equipment during a learning session
Structured learning moves from knowledge into demonstration, practice and workplace application.

From E-Learning to Clinical Practice: Why Course Completion Is Only the Beginning

A completed e-learning module tells you one thing: someone finished it. It does not tell you whether the knowledge moved anywhere. For organisations rolling out IV Cannulation, venepuncture and phlebotomy training at scale, that gap between "completed" and "changed practice" is where most of the real risk sits.

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Learners practising a clinical skill with supervised peer support
Observed practice adds evidence that course completion alone cannot provide.

Beyond Course Completion: What OSCEs Can and Cannot Tell Us About Clinical Competence

A written test tells you whether someone understood the theory. An Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) tells you something more: whether they could apply it, under some pressure, in a set scenario, in front of an assessor. That is a genuinely useful step up from knowledge testing alone, and it is still not the same thing as competence in the workplace.

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Evidence and learning from VeinTrain.

Assumed but Unverified: What a New Neonatal Infusion Study Means for Vascular Access Practice

Why this matters

Getting a cannula or line in is only the start of the vascular access safety story. What happens after insertion, whether the medication or fluid running through that line is actually being delivered as intended, is a separate and less-discussed question. A newly published, open-access qualitative study in the Journal of Neonatal Nursing looks directly at that question in neonatal intensive care, and its findings are relevant to anyone thinking about vascular access as a full pathway rather than a single procedure.

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Do our IV catheter policies match what actually happens at the bedside?

Research
A 2026 global survey [1], launched through WoCoVA [2], asked 251 healthcare workers across 44 countries about their real-world knowledge and routine practice in IV catheter dressing, infection prevention, patency and locking.

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Gloved hands practising IV cannulation on a simulation vein pad, where early complications can be safely recognised.

Infiltration and extravasation: what current evidence says every IV practitioner should know

Peripheral IV therapy is one of the most common interventions in healthcare, and two of its most common complications remain widely under-recognised: infiltration and extravasation. Both involve fluid or medication leaking from a vein into the surrounding tissue, yet both can go unnoticed until a patient is already uncomfortable or harmed. The NIVAS Infiltration and Extravasation Toolkit, published in February 2024, together with an NHS national patient-safety campaign in 2023, put these complications squarely back on the agenda for anyone inserting or managing a peripheral cannula. For nurses, HCAs and clinical educators, that means revisiting some basics with fresh eyes, not because practice has failed, but because recognition can always be sharpened.

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