Nurse-led innovation that cuts costs and workload while improving patient outcomes

Video and simulation training in IV self-administration allows faster inpatient discharge

• Hospital nurses’ project achieves increase in self-administration of antibiotics once inpatients return home
• Team’s work eases workload pressures for community nurses and allows prompt hospital discharge
• Patient feedback is ‘universally positive’

A nurse-led team that made videos and a dummy training ‘arm’ that shows patients how to self-administer intravenous antibiotics has saved its trust £5 million in its first year – as well as improving patient experience.

The outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy service (OPAT) nurses’ project at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust cut the time patients take to learn IV self-administration, enabling earlier discharge home from Addenbrooke's