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2nd October 2009
The Chief Medical Officer’s Venous Thromboembolism (VTE) Implementation Working Group and eLearning for Healthcare have published a web-based education resource (e-VTE) designed to help raise awareness and improve understanding of VTE.
Action
Healthcare professional, both in primary and secondary care should be aware of the importance of preventing VTE. e-VTE provides pragmatic information on assessing the risk of VTE for an individual and advising appropriate preventative measures. It complements the NPC educational materials, which provide a detailed summary of the evidence base for the prevention and treatment of VTE.
What is the background to this?
VTE is a significant patient safety issue because it is estimated to cause 25,000 potentially avoidable deaths each year in hospitals in England. The VTE eLearning resource was designed to support the national VTE prevention strategy and aims to improve understanding of VTE within the clinical community in both the hospital setting and in primary care. The interactive learning materials include a pre-learning questionnaire and a post-learning assessment together with four sessions of eLearning. These cover the demographics, epidemiology and risk profile of VTE, and include an overview of methods of thromboprophylaxis (mechanical and pharmacological) and risk assessment and implementation of thromboprophylaxis in hospitals and in primary care.
This resource is likely to be useful in conjunction with the NPC’s suite of educational materials on VTE, available on NPC. This includes a <60 minute eLearning event, which considers the prevention and treatment of VTE and looks in more detail at the evidence base for pharmacological interventions. A case study, a quiz, and key slides are also available.
NICE is currently producing a clinical guideline on reducing the risk of VTE, which is due for publication in January 2010.
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