NEWS
March 11, 2008
The UW, in collaboration with the Coalition to Prevent Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT), will host a DVT awareness event featuring remarks by the Coalitions's national patient spokesperson Melanie Bloom and UW vascular disease experts. The event takes place Wednesday, March 12, 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., in the lobby of the Health Sciences building, 1959 NE Pacific St. In addition, the event will focus on educational interventions for providers and patients at UW Medical Center and Harborview Medical Center, and will include a presentation of the Web-based VTE Safety Toolkit for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of venous thromboembolism (VTE), a disease that includes DVT and PE. The toolkit was developed by an interprofessional team of UW researchers and clinicians, led by the School of Nursing's Brenda Zierler, PhD, RN, and the Center for Clinical Excellence's Gene Peterson, MD, PhD, as part of a Partnerships in Patient Safety study funded by the Dept. of Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (See http://vte.washington.edu/ ).March 11, 2008
The 20th American Venous Forum’s (AVF) Annual Meeting was held on February 20-23, 2008. This year’s meeting was held at the Charleston Place Hotel in Charleston South Carolina. Dr. Mark Meissner, member of the VTE Safety Research and Clinial team is the current President of the American Venous Forum. Mark presided over the meeting and gave his presidential speech about the importance of using evidence in managing venous disease. Meeting highlights included a Post-Graduate Course where Dr. Brenda Zierler (Principal Investigator on the VTE Safety Toolkit grant) spoke on “Databases and Reporting for Venous Thromboembolism in an Era of Pay for Performance.” Jung-Ah Lee, was awarded a Sigvaris Traveling Fellowship to attend the AVF meeting to present “The evaluation of diagnostic procedures in patients with suspected venous thromboembolism.” Jung-Ah is the lead research assistant on the VTE Safety Toolkit study. She is currently completing her doctoral dissertation and is studying the cost effectiveness of various PE diagnostic strategies and the utilization of diagnostic tests in venous thromboembolism.December 5, 2007
AHRQ Releases Toolkits to Help Providers and Patients Implement Safer Health Care Practices.The press release about the patient safety toolkits that have been disseminated nationally by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). This venous thromboembolism Safety Toolkit was one of the first selected by AHRQ and the manuscript describing the toolkit and process for developing VTE Safety Toolkit was accepted for publication. www.ahrq.gov/news/press/pr2007/pstoolspr.htm
