Developing Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy (OPAT) Pathways

Vikki Connell is the lead pharmacy technician for AMS and OPAT at the University Hospitals of North Midlands (UHNM) NHS Trust in Staffordshire. After working 15 years in community pharmacy as a pharmacy technician, Vikki made the move into the secondary care field in 2018, working as a pharmacy technician. She gained her accreditation for Checking (ACT) qualification and then became a Medicines Management Pharmacy Technician (MMT). Vikki moved into her current position in 2022, where she has strived for the improvement of OPAT services within her Trust and works closely with the OPAT CNSs to help deliver the best service possible to their patients. They have initiated several workstreams to make these improvements and are always striving to do better for their patients. They are still working on improving the service but also want to share their experiences with others to help grow OPAT services around the Country.

Tim Wharton is an experienced nurse currently working in an Outpatient Parenteral Antibiotic commercial team. He has a strong background in Renal Haemodialysis nursing in centre, as well as peritoneal dialysis and home haemodialysis. Tim has applied this to commercial roles in both the world of chronic renal medicine and antibiotic devices, therapies and services. Tim is a highly motivated individual with a passion for project management, service and pathway redesign, and delivery of the best patient outcomes. 

Ensuring the best clinical outcomes for patients and driving clinical excellence forms part of Tims current commercial sales role. Through this and other projects he has been able to build meaningful relationships with many different types of healthcare professionals and stakeholders. Collaborative projects with the NHS Trusts has given Tim a good understanding of key legislative and guiding initiatives, ICB’s and commissioning of services and the NHS’s relationship with industry.

Andrew is the founder and lead nurse Consultant for the Hospitals’ Intravenous and Vascular Access Services (IVAS) unit where he manages a large team of vascular access specialist nurses delivering bring a 7-day service,  infusion specialist staff who provide same day IV infusions and other IV therapies and home infection management nurses.

Andrew is expert in placing ports and renal catheters as well as PICCs and places catheters in adults and paediatrics. 

His specialist interest is vascular access technology and is an early adopter of new concepts technology including infrared vein location, biphasic vein amplification, PICC placement and catheter securement. 

Andrew is an experienced national and international speaker and has published extensively in scientific and research journals in the field of vascular access and IV therapy.

He is the chair of NIVAS, the national infusion and vascular access society of the UK.  He is a board member of MEDUSA the national electronic injectable medicines guide, and a global committee member of the World Congress of Vascular Access (WoCoVA).  He is an expert advisor for the health technologies evaluation program for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and an independent consultant for the UK MHRA. (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) and for the Health Technology Wales (HTW), a government funded, but independent, health technology assessment organisation

In 2022 he published The Benefits of a Nursing Led Vascular Access Service Team: A White Paper to outline a standardised structure and approach for the NHS to deliver vascular access services in every hospital and in 2024 launched the UK National Extravasation and infiltration toolkit. 

In 2023 Andrew was a finalist in the HSJ Clinical Leader of the year and the Nursing Times Nurse of the year.

Lyndsay Rignall works for the Intermediate Care Team at Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. The Community Rapid Response & Intermediate Care Team operates as a Virtual Ward across the county, managing patients with sub-acute conditions to aid their recovery from illness or injury within their own homes by preventing unnecessary hospital admissions and reducing length of hospital stay.