September 6–12, 2026 · Executive Brief
Vascular Nurses Week 2026: Connect Recognition to Reliable Vascular Care
Use Vascular Nurses Week to make specialized nursing judgment, access, surveillance, handoffs, and follow-through visible across the vascular care continuum.
Leadership signal
Recognition is credible when specialized nursing judgment can move the system.
Vascular nurses work where small changes can carry large consequences: a new pain pattern, a wound that is not progressing, a change in color or temperature, an access-site concern, uncertainty about medication, a barrier to exercise, a missed surveillance appointment, or a patient who does not know whom to call. Their contribution is not confined to a unit or procedure. It connects inpatient care, vascular laboratories, operating rooms, interventional areas, wound services, ambulatory clinics, rehabilitation, primary care, home services, and the patient’s daily life.
The 2024 multisociety lower-extremity peripheral artery disease guideline emphasizes longitudinal follow-up, structured exercise, risk-factor management, preventive foot care, and multispecialty care for chronic limb-threatening ischemia.6 Those expectations create an operating challenge. The right clinical recommendation produces value only when the organization can route it, explain it, schedule it, monitor it, and respond when progress deviates from plan.
Vascular Nurses Week should therefore do two things at once. It should honor the expertise and commitment of vascular nurses, and it should expose the conditions that either amplify or suppress their contribution. Appreciation without role clarity can leave nurses responsible for outcomes without authority over the route. New protocols without capacity can add documentation while open loops remain unchanged. Dashboards without patient experience can count activity while hiding whether care is usable.
Leaders can start with one real patient journey and ask where nursing judgment entered, what information was available, who could act, how the next team received the plan, and which exceptions remained invisible. The purpose is not to assign blame. It is to understand the design of work across organizational boundaries.
That review should distinguish clinical scope from operating support. Licensed professionals determine assessment and care within applicable standards, credentials, policy, and law. Executives determine whether teams have capacity, interoperable information, referral agreements, escalation pathways, measurement support, education resources, and protected time to make that clinical work reliable.
Evidence signal
The evidence supports structured nursing contribution, but it does not justify one universal model.
The literature includes guidelines, reviews, randomized and observational studies, quality-improvement reports, and implementation projects. These sources address different populations and outcomes. Their numerical results should not be combined into a single effect estimate or converted into a promised return. They do, however, identify recurring management questions: how patients enter the route, whether follow-up is structured, how warning signs are escalated, whether secondary prevention and exercise are reachable, how experience is measured, and where disparities appear.
Figure 1. Selected evidence signals and interpretation limits
Structured telephone surveillance
A 2026 prospective observational study included 308 patients after infrainguinal endovascular revascularization. The structured nursing follow-up group had lower adjusted target-limb reintervention and major adverse limb-event rates, higher medication adherence, and earlier warning-sign recognition.2 Allocation was not randomized, so residual confounding remains possible.
Exercise access and completion
A 2026 multicenter observational cohort screened 1,197 people, identified 576 as potentially eligible for supervised exercise therapy, and reported that 207 accepted. Attendance was 43.9% of planned sessions; travel, personal reasons, and preference for home-based therapy were common barriers.1 The findings show access friction, not a causal staffing effect.
Patient-reported experience
A secondary analysis of a randomized trial found higher early perceived quality on five items for person-centered nurse-led follow-up, including useful self-care information, respectful care, nurse responsibility, and telephone contact.5 The item-level results should not be treated as proof that every outcome improved.
Transitional care
A scoping review screened 888 records and included six studies. Nurse-led transitional programs were associated with lower readmissions and improved quality of life, while no significant differences were identified for unplanned surgery, major amputation, or mortality.4 Small, heterogeneous evidence limits certainty and transferability.
Guideline delivery gap
The 16-center PORTRAIT registry enrolled 1,275 patients. Only 19.7% received all four assessed care components, and 23% were referred to supervised exercise therapy.21 Registry data describe variation and opportunity, but do not identify one corrective intervention.
Negative evidence matters
A 2026 randomized trial of 54 patients found no significant health benefit from two specialist nurse-led education visits after endovascular aortic repair compared with standard care.3 Leaders should preserve this result. A plausible intervention still requires local testing, sufficient dose, and outcome-specific evaluation.
Role design
Define vascular nursing work across the continuum, not as isolated tasks.
A reliable role begins with the clinical and operational problems it is intended to address. Depending on setting and scope, vascular nurses may contribute to assessment, procedure preparation and recovery, wound and limb surveillance, patient and caregiver education, secondary-prevention support, exercise navigation, telephone follow-up, vascular access monitoring, care coordination, and escalation. The organization should not assume that every nurse or site performs the same work. It should document who does what, under which authority, with which competency, and how work transfers when the need moves beyond that role.
Role design should make five elements visible. First, define the trigger: which symptom, result, referral, wound state, discharge, or missed milestone activates review. Second, define the response: what assessment, coordination, education, monitoring, or escalation is expected. Third, define decision rights: what the nurse may initiate, adjust, schedule, or escalate under policy and scope. Fourth, define closure: what evidence shows that the next step occurred. Fifth, define reactivation: which change brings the case back into active review.
Without these elements, leaders may see a growing message queue and conclude that capacity alone is the problem. Capacity may be part of it, but an unclear trigger, duplicate queue, missing clinical data, unavailable appointment type, or ambiguous handoff can generate avoidable work. Workload review should separate value-producing clinical judgment from rework created by the system.
Competency and backup coverage belong in the same design. A highly capable individual cannot be the only memory of the pathway. Define the knowledge and skill requirements for each function, the supervision and consultation route, cross-coverage limits, orientation and continuing-development plan, and the method used to identify when demand exceeds safe capacity.
The role should also include permission to surface design defects. A nurse who repeatedly sees incomplete referrals, delayed test results, inaccessible exercise programs, or patients confused after discharge is observing a system signal. Leaders need a route that converts those observations into reviewed improvement work without requiring the nurse to solve the entire problem alone.
Closed-loop care route
Move every vascular signal to a named state and a named owner.
Patients rarely experience vascular care as a single encounter. They move through recognition, assessment, diagnostic testing, treatment selection, procedures, wound care, recovery, prevention, exercise, and surveillance. A closed-loop route makes that movement explicit without replacing clinical judgment.
Figure 2. Proposed vascular nursing reliability route
- Recognize and capture. Record the concern, source, timing, available clinical context, patient communication needs, and immediate safety status.
- Triage and assign. Apply the organization’s approved urgency criteria, identify the responsible clinical service, and name the current owner.
- Assess and complete information. Obtain the history, findings, tests, medication context, wound or access information, and patient priorities required for the next decision.
- Agree on the plan. Make the treatment, monitoring, education, referral, or follow-up plan understandable to the patient and executable by the next team.
- Act and escalate exceptions. Complete the next step or surface the precise barrier, such as missing capacity, transportation, authorization, technology, language access, or clinical deterioration.
- Confirm closure. Verify that the intended action occurred, the result was reviewed, the patient knows what happens next, and unresolved risk has an owner.
- Continue longitudinal follow-up. Reassess symptoms, function, wounds, medication access, exercise participation, surveillance milestones, and new barriers at the locally defined cadence.
Closure should never mean that a message was sent. It means the intended receiving state was reached or the exception was accepted by an accountable owner. This distinction matters when referrals cross organizations, patients face transportation or cost barriers, or the next service has limited capacity.
Access and equity
Measure who reaches care, who completes it, and where the route becomes harder to use.
Peripheral artery disease outcomes differ by sex, race, socioeconomic status, and geography. A JACC scientific statement reports that Black people have about twice the PAD prevalence of White people and experience less optimal care and higher amputation rates; it also describes later revascularization among women and geographic variation in amputation.17 A separate review details racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic inequities in amputation risk among people with PAD and diabetes.18 These findings require more than an annual awareness message. They require stratified operational review.
Vascular nurses often see access barriers in operational detail: a patient cannot travel to supervised exercise, wound supplies are delayed, instructions do not match language or literacy needs, follow-up numbers are unclear, clinic timing conflicts with work or caregiving, or a referral returns without a next step. These observations should enter a governed improvement process.
Stratification is useful only when definitions are sound and groups are large enough for responsible interpretation. Review referral completion, time to assessment, exercise acceptance and attendance, surveillance completion, wound follow-up, medication access, readmissions, and patient-reported experience by relevant demographic, geographic, payer, language, disability, and access variables. Protect privacy, avoid causal claims from descriptive differences, and combine quantitative review with direct listening.
Do not use lower completion as evidence that a population is less motivated. Investigate route design. The 2026 supervised exercise cohort identified travel and preference for home-based therapy among common barriers, while only 35.9% of eligible patients agreed to participate and attendance was 43.9% of planned sessions.1 Those data suggest that an available program is not automatically an accessible program.
Equity review should produce a decision. Options may include alternative locations, hybrid or home-supported models where clinically appropriate, transportation support, improved language access, simpler referral steps, evening contact windows, warm handoffs, or partnerships with primary care and community services. Each change needs clinical review, resources, a defined population, and measures for reach, safety, experience, and unintended consequences.
Transitions and surveillance
Carry the vascular plan across settings with the warning signs and next owner attached.
A discharge summary or procedure note may document what happened, yet still leave the receiving team and patient without an executable plan. Vascular transitions require the current condition, procedure or treatment, medication plan, wound or access-site status, activity or exercise guidance, surveillance schedule, pending results, warning signs, response route, patient goals, and next accountable owner to move together.
Hospital to home
Reconcile the plan with the patient and caregiver, confirm supplies and medication access, identify the first follow-up contact, explain which changes require urgent response under approved instructions, and document who reviews open results.
Procedure to longitudinal care
Transmit the procedure and access-site information, surveillance interval, preventive therapy plan, functional goals, wound needs, and escalation route. Confirm the receiving service accepted the handoff.
Specialty to primary care
Separate what vascular specialists retain from what primary care assumes. A 2024 improvement project used primary-care or transitional-clinic follow-up for high-risk vascular surgery patients and reported lower readmission among those who received the intervention, but staff adherence and nonrandomized comparison limit inference.7
Clinic to exercise or wound service
Send clinical eligibility, goals, relevant precautions, contact information, and the reason for referral. Track acceptance, first attendance, interruption, completion, and return of the progress signal.
Complementary studies widen the transition lens without creating one standard model. A low-risk venous-thromboembolism pathway illustrates the coordination required when treatment moves from an emergency department to outpatient care.8 Vascular wound-clinic reports describe integrated nursing practice and small local service redesigns,11,19 while a systematic review shows that venous leg ulcers represent a substantial but variably measured population burden.15 Telephone follow-up evaluation adds a medication-communication perspective,12 and qualitative work on amputation decisions reinforces the need for clear, person-centered communication when choices are consequential.13 In revascularization follow-up, adjusted patient-reported outcomes did not translate into uniformly significant between-group differences,16 and a small exercise study found that program mode affected adherence.20 Together, these sources support explicit mechanisms, patient partnership, and local evaluation rather than a generic promise that more contact alone will improve every outcome.
Structured nursing follow-up can support continuity, but leaders should avoid assuming that contact alone improves outcomes. The 2026 observational telephone-surveillance study reported favorable adjusted associations,2 while the 2026 randomized education trial found no significant health benefit from its intervention.3 Design the follow-up around a defined mechanism: what signal is collected, who can act on it, how quickly, and what result confirms that the action mattered.
Failure analysis
Investigate why vascular follow-through fails before selecting the remedy.
A missed follow-up, delayed wound review, incomplete exercise program, or avoidable return visit can arise from several interacting causes. The same visible outcome may reflect unclear role design, limited capacity, missing information, fragmented technology, inaccessible service design, or patient circumstances that the organization did not accommodate. A fishbone discussion can organize hypotheses, but it does not rank or prove them.
Figure 3. Qualitative fishbone for unreliable vascular follow-through
Verify each hypothesis with multiple forms of evidence. Compare the documented route with the work as performed. Sample complete and incomplete cases. Listen to patients, caregivers, nurses, physicians, therapists, scheduling teams, and community partners. Identify where queues age, information is re-entered, appointments fail, escalation depends on personal relationships, or coverage changes after hours. Then select the smallest intervention that addresses a verified cause and define how leaders will know whether the change worked.
Operating system
Give vascular nursing a governed route, not a larger collection of disconnected queues.
A vascular care operating system connects governance, clinical authority, frontline nursing work, multidisciplinary capacity, data, and patient partnership. It does not centralize every clinical decision. It creates common visibility around demand, state, ownership, exceptions, and learning.
Figure 4. Proposed vascular care reliability operating system
Daily control
Review urgent signals, unassigned work, missing information, deteriorating wounds or symptoms routed under approved criteria, failed contacts, capacity constraints, and cases requiring immediate clinical escalation.
Weekly route review
Review aged referrals, first-appointment delays, incomplete handoffs, surveillance gaps, exercise and wound-service access, open results, patient barriers, workload, and changes tested by frontline teams.
Monthly performance review
Review reach, timeliness, completion, patient experience, preventive-care processes, complications, utilization, workforce capability, equity stratification, balancing measures, and data-quality limits.
Quarterly governance
Decide which defects require policy, capacity, technology, partnership, contracting, workforce, or capital action. Review whether role boundaries, service promises, and measures still match the clinical strategy.
Nurse-led ward-round implementation in a vascular surgery setting improved compliance with recommended practices and increased nurses’ confidence leading interprofessional discussion, although the project design cannot establish broad causal effects.14 The management lesson is practical: support, preparation, standard work, and audit feedback matter when leaders ask nurses to lead a coordination function.
Measurement
Use a scorecard that keeps access, process, outcomes, experience, equity, and workforce distinct.
No single metric represents vascular nursing value. A scorecard should show the pathway mechanism and avoid attributing every outcome to one role. Each measure needs a local definition, numerator, denominator, source, owner, cadence, stratification plan, and interpretation limit.
Figure 5. Structured vascular care reliability scorecard
| Domain | Example measure | Numerator | Denominator | Owner and cadence | Interpretation limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reach | Eligible patients entering the intended route | Eligible patients with accepted referral or documented plan | All patients meeting the local eligibility definition | Service-line analytics, monthly | Depends on complete eligibility capture |
| Timeliness | Signals triaged within locally approved interval | Signals triaged within the interval | All eligible signals received | Vascular operations, weekly | Does not show appropriateness or outcome |
| Closure | Handoffs accepted with next owner confirmed | Eligible handoffs with documented acceptance | All eligible handoffs | Nursing and clinic leaders, weekly | Documentation may not prove patient understanding |
| Prevention | Complete review of locally defined prevention bundle | Patients with every applicable element reviewed | Eligible patients | Clinical governance, monthly | Process review is not equivalent to adherence or outcome |
| Experience | Patients reporting a clear plan and contact route | Respondents selecting the positive response | Valid respondents | Experience team, monthly or quarterly | Response bias and small samples may distort results |
| Equity | Difference in route completion between groups | Group-specific completed routes | Group-specific eligible population | Equity and analytics leaders, quarterly | Descriptive difference does not establish cause |
| Workforce | Demand completed within staffed capacity | Work units completed without unsafe deferral or unplanned overtime | Total eligible work units | Nursing operations, monthly | Requires a valid workload definition |
| Outcome | Locally selected clinical or utilization outcome | Patients meeting the validated outcome definition | Eligible population at risk | Quality and clinical governance, quarterly | Multiple teams, risk factors, and secular changes affect results |
The scorecard should also show data quality. Report missingness, time lag, denominator changes, and small-cell suppression. Annotate major pathway changes. Where a measure is new, run a shadow period before setting targets. Where a target exists, confirm that it does not encourage premature closure, avoidance of complex patients, or transfer of work to an unmeasured queue.
Executive agenda
A 90-day pilot can turn recognition into a durable reliability improvement.
Days 1 to 30
Define and listen
- Name the executive sponsor, clinical authority, vascular nursing co-lead, operational owner, data steward, primary-care or community partner, and patient-experience partner.
- Select one population and one route, such as lower-extremity revascularization follow-up, vascular wound care, or supervised exercise access.
- Map entry, triage, information needs, decision rights, handoffs, exceptions, closure, and reactivation.
- Sample complete and incomplete cases and listen to patients and frontline staff.
- Validate baseline measures, workload, equity stratification, and data limitations.
Days 31 to 60
Build and rehearse
- Approve a role charter, service promise, escalation standard, minimum handoff, and coverage plan.
- Create the smallest shared work view needed to show state, owner, age, and exception.
- Confirm appointment, rehabilitation, wound, language, transportation, and technology capacity.
- Train participating teams and rehearse urgent, missing-information, missed-contact, and after-hours scenarios.
- Begin the bounded pilot and review exceptions with frontline staff each week.
Days 61 to 90
Learn and decide
- Review reach, timeliness, completion, experience, equity, workload, safety, utilization, and the selected patient outcome.
- Investigate variation through record review, observation, and direct listening.
- Correct verified defects while preserving role scope and clinical authority.
- Confirm maintenance ownership, competency support, coverage, and reactivation criteria.
- Adapt, expand, pause, or stop through a documented governance decision.
Figure 6. Proposed 90-day implementation timeline
Leadership close
Honor vascular nurses by strengthening the route around their expertise.
Vascular Nurses Week offers a visible moment of appreciation. Its longer value comes from what leaders do with the signals vascular nurses already see: incomplete information, delayed access, unclear ownership, patients struggling to follow the plan, and opportunities to prevent avoidable harm.
A credible observance does not promise that one role or one intervention will solve a complex outcome. It makes the contribution visible, tests a defined mechanism, preserves evidence limits, and supports shared accountability. When governance, clinical authority, nursing capacity, multidisciplinary partnership, patient experience, and data are connected, recognition becomes part of a more reliable vascular care system.
Verify the official Vascular Nurses Week observance, and explore The Healthcare Executive’s Health Observance Calendar for related executive briefs.
Peer-reviewed references
Research used in this executive brief
- Popplewell MA, Benson RA, Kite A, et al. The Circulation Foundation and Society of Vascular Nurses Joint Intermittent Claudication Study: an observational cohort study. European Journal of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery. 2026. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejvs.2026.06.061
- Del Rio-Sola ML, Garcia-Padron C, Alvarez Garcia E, Fernandez-Fernandez R. Nursing-led telephone follow-up after lower limb endovascular surgery: an observational study on early detection and patient safety. Journal of Vascular Nursing. 2026;44(1):49-57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvn.2025.12.003
- Nilsson J, Nordanstig J, Ringdal M, et al. Impact of nurse-led postoperative education on health outcomes following endovascular aortic repair: a randomized trial. Scientific Reports. 2026;16:16009. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-54460-w
- Mozzarelli F, Guasconi M, Parozzi M, Bonacaro A. Nurse-led transitional care programmes in peripheral arterial disease: a scoping review of patient outcomes. Journal of Research in Nursing. 2026;31(1-2). https://doi.org/10.1177/17449871251381684
- Haile ST, Olsson M, Lindstrand R, et al. Patient reported experiences of receiving person-centred, nurse-led follow-up after revascularisation for intermittent claudication: secondary analysis of a randomised controlled trial. Journal of Clinical Nursing. 2025;34(7):3003-3016. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.17762
- Gornik HL, Aronow HD, Goodney PP, et al. 2024 ACC/AHA/AACVPR/APMA/ABC/SCAI/SVM/SVN/SVS/SIR/VESS guideline for the management of lower extremity peripheral artery disease. Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 2024;83(24):2497-2604. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2024.02.013
- Ford E, Fitzpatrick S, Rosenberger S. Implementing primary care follow-up for high-risk vascular surgery patients. Journal of Vascular Nursing. 2024;42(3):159-164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvn.2024.04.002
- Baird AM, Aday AW, Sullivan AE, et al. Implementation of a transition of care pathway for low-risk patients presenting to the emergency department with venous thromboembolism. Journal of Vascular Nursing. 2024;42(3):208-212. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvn.2024.07.001
- O Shaughnessy MO, Kent S. Advancing nursing practice in Ireland: a pathway of care for nurse-led integrated venous leg ulcer management. Journal of Vascular Nursing. 2024;42(2):110-114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvn.2024.02.003
- Clark JB, Hyrkas K. Early identification of vascular access site complications and frequent heart rate and blood pressure monitoring after cardiac catheterization: a scoping review. Journal of Vascular Nursing. 2024;42(4):228-239. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvn.2024.08.001
- Pinkova J, Monaro S. Integrating new approaches to care in a vascular wound clinic. Journal of Vascular Nursing. 2024;42(2):83-88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvn.2024.01.002
- Højgaard HG, Frederiksen K, Høgh AL, Dahl M. First pill hardest to swallow: an evaluation study of cardiovascular nurse-led follow-up phone calls. Journal of Vascular Nursing. 2024;42(1):35-43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvn.2023.11.007
- Monaro S, West S, Gullick J. Making decisions about amputation for chronic limb threatening ischaemia. Journal of Vascular Nursing. 2024;42(1):65-73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvn.2023.11.011
- Neo NWS, Li Y, Salazar AB, et al. Structured, nurse-led ward rounds to improve interprofessional communication and optimize care of vascular surgery patients: a best practice implementation project. JBI Evidence Implementation. 2023;21(4):365-373. https://doi.org/10.1097/XEB.0000000000000385
- Probst S, Saini C, Gschwind G, et al. Prevalence and incidence of venous leg ulcers: a systematic review and meta-analysis. International Wound Journal. 2023;20(9):3906-3921. https://doi.org/10.1111/iwj.14272
- Haile ST, Olsson M, Lindstrand R, et al. Patient related outcomes after receiving a person centred nurse led follow up programme among patients undergoing revascularisation for intermittent claudication. European Journal of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery. 2023;66(3):371-379. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejvs.2023.06.030
- McDermott MM, Ho KJ, Alabi O, et al. Disparities in diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes of peripheral artery disease: JACC scientific statement. Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 2023;82(24):2312-2328. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2023.09.830
- Fereydooni A, Patel J, Dossabhoy SS, George EL, Arya S. Racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic inequities in amputation risk for patients with peripheral artery disease and diabetes. Seminars in Vascular Surgery. 2023;36(1):9-18. https://doi.org/10.1053/j.semvascsurg.2023.01.005
- Fitzpatrick S, Hawkins S, Dunlap E, Nagarsheth K. Nurse driven outpatient wound center: reducing readmission with wound care excellence. Journal of Vascular Nursing. 2022;40(2):100-104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvn.2022.05.002
- Elgersma KM, Brown RJL, Salisbury DL, et al. Adherence and exercise mode in supervised exercise therapy for peripheral artery disease. Journal of Vascular Nursing. 2020;38(3):108-117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvn.2020.07.002
- Saxon JT, Safley DM, Mena-Hurtado C, et al. Adherence to guideline-recommended therapy, including supervised exercise therapy referral, across peripheral artery disease specialty clinics: insights from the international PORTRAIT registry. Journal of the American Heart Association. 2020;9(3):e012541. https://doi.org/10.1161/JAHA.119.012541
- Ma C, McHugh MD, Aiken LH. Organization of hospital nursing and 30-day readmissions in Medicare patients undergoing surgery. Medical Care. 2015;53(1):65-70. https://doi.org/10.1097/MLR.0000000000000258
Executive-use note: This article provides evidence-informed management guidance, not clinical, legal, labor, credentialing, or financial advice. Organizations should adapt assessment, triage, staffing, scope, competencies, referrals, surveillance, measurement, privacy, and implementation to current professional standards, applicable law and regulation, accreditation, organizational policy, contracts, local governance, service capacity, and patient needs. Observance dates were verified with the Society for Vascular Nursing.