CVAA is pleased to participate in an online knowledge sharing network called Sosido (www.sosido.com). Sosido was created for and by healthcare associations, to speed knowledge transfer, promote collaboration, highlight the important work and research by members, and bridge silos by publicizing the contributions of each specialty group to the broader healthcare community. CVAA joins a growing network of associations and research groups on Sosido, including the Canadian Association of Nurses in Oncology (CANO).

CVAA members will receive a weekly email digest summarizing all activity in the CVAA community. You don’t have to log in to participate, and anything that’s important will come to your inbox, including:

• Updates on all publications authored by CVAA members that week. Sosido automatically delivers a current and complete snapshot of the work of our CVAA community.
• A summary of new articles released that week from journals chosen by you.
• Access to a secure CVAA members-only forum to ask and answer questions.

(Watch a slide tour of Sosido.)

Please note that you can unsubscribe from emails or remove yourself from the network at any time.

We look forward to staying in touch with you through the CVAA community on Sosido, and we welcome your questions and feedback.

If you have not recieved your login details, please email Melissa Stark at cvaa@cvaa.info

The CVAA Member Q&A Forum on Sosido is one the most used benefit. Here are some recent questions from CVAA Members. Log in today to see the answers! 

1. How long should unused prepared IV lines be kept prior to discard? 
2. With the mask shortage from the COVID-19 pandemic, how are your homecare nurses providing care for patients who require CVAD procedures that require a mask? 
3. What facilities are using the chlorhexidine dressings for short-term non-tunneled CVCs? Is the standard of practice for all facilities to use the chlorhexidine dressing for all CVCs or is it just when there is an infection suspected?
4. Looking for information related to frequency of flushing for pediatric implanted ports. We currently state every 4 weeks if not in use but we have heard that there is a move towards every 8 weeks? I am also interested in flushing volumes.
5. If a patient has a blocked PICC line (assuming it is a double lumen and only one is blocked, sluggish, etc.) do we administer Alteplase to ALL the lumens or just the blocked ones?
6. What are your thoughts on not teaching patients to pull back for blood flash from their PICC line when taught to self administer their own IV antibiotics?

April 2020

CVAA members have access to a new community on Sosido called the Global Nursing Alliance on COVID-19 (GNAC-19) which connects 7,500+ nurses from around the world to share research and experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. See more about GNAC-19.

When you log in to Sosido, you will now have access to the GNAC-19 forum to ask and answer COVID-19-related questions of your global nurse colleagues. (See instructions to set or reset your Sosido password below.) You will continue to receive only one Sosido email digest every Wednesday, with content from all of your Sosido communities.

If you are receiving this email, you already have a Sosido account and you have been granted automatic access to GNAC-19 (you don't need to sign up). If you have nursing colleagues who are not currently members of Sosido but would like to join the GNAC-19 community, please invite them to sign up here.

Thank you to the Cancer Nurses Society of Australia for spearheading and leading this initiative, and thank you to AstraZeneca, BD, Ipsen and Mylan for providing financial support to make GNAC-19 possible.

We are extremely grateful for the work of our healthcare professionals in these challenging times. We would like to support you in any way we can, and encourage your feedback.

Tanis Steward
Leader, Sosido
tanis@sosido.com