Spire Southampton Nurse is National VTE Champion

VTE Exemplar Status and Lead

In May 2015, Spire Southampton Hospital was awarded Exemplar Centre status for our work on Venous Thromboembolism (VTE). Venous thrombosis is a blood clot, or thrombus, that forms within a vein. A typical type of venous thrombosis is deep vein thrombosis (DVT), which can break off and become a pulmonary embolism (PE). These conditions affect thousands of people in the UK each year and are potentially fatal. Exemplar Centres are central to the success of NHS England's national VTE prevention programme, which works to reduce VTE incidents and improve patient safety across the health service. Exemplar Centres share successful strategies with other trusts for identifying patients at risk and implementing measures for avoiding VTE.

This fantastic achievement was led by Karen Becheley-Price. Since then Karen has gone on to take the lead role for Spire National VTE Networking and is supporting other hospitals as they go through the processes of achieving the same status.

As the National Lead, Karen has established a VTE Networking Group across the Spire hospitals to promote an organisation wide understanding of VTE, the prevention of VTE and post-discharge care within the Spire group. The Group's aim is to develop the current policies in line with evidence based practice, legislation and compliance. The group will support other hospitals wishing to gain Exemplar status with the ultimate goal of all Spire hospitals becoming centres of excellence.

Sarah Needle, Matron, said 'Karen’s enthusiasm and passion for VTE is infectious'.