Burton's Queen's Hospital's risk assessment tool for blood clots

Each year more than 25,000 people in England die from blood clots or venous thromboembolism (VTE) contracted in hospital.

This is more than the combined total of deaths from breast cancer, AIDS and traffic accidents, and more than 25 times the amount of people who die from MRSA.

At Queen's Hospital in Burton on Trent a team led by consultant Haematologist Dr Hume Ahmad, have developed a risk assessment tool to help staff identify people at risk of developing clots.

Dr Ahmad says, 'We now have wonderful drugs that would prevent blood clots. What we need is to be able to identify those patients that are at risk of developing blood clots when they come to hospital.'

The system works by asking 2 simple questions; is the patient at risk of a clot developing? If the answer is 'Yes' then the second question asks you; is it safe to prescribe clot preventing medicines?

These questions are added to the assessment programme used by nurses when admitting patients. It's key is that it is built into the operational process, medical staff have to go through the process to proceed through the system.

Ward sister Cheryl Chamberlain says, 'Every patient who is admitted, needs to have this assessment, it's very easy to use and it has been proved to reduce the incidence of patients developing Thromboembolism.'

Category:

Education

Tags:

• NHS
• local
• West
• Midlands
• blood
• clots
• Queen's
• Hospital
• Burton
• venous
• thromboembolism
• VTE