Reducing facility vascular access rates has been a priority for CMS for many years. With proper and ongoing staff and patient education, patients are able to maintain healthy AV fistulas or grafts. Regular performance of the look, listen, feel check allows early detection of problems andimplementation of appropriate interventions to protect the access . The Look, Listen and Feel technique is a quick and effective way to assess a patient’s access prior to cannulation. This method can be taught to patients so that they can assess their own access on non-dialysis days. This is a simple method of monitoring that does not require any special equipment and can potential save a patient’s access. Photo source: ESRD National Coordinating Center.

For more information, click on the links below: