Shanghai nurse nominated for Nightingale medal for exemplary service

Xing Hong is a nurse at Shanghai General Hospital. She is the only candidate from Shanghai to be nominated for this year's Florence Nightingale Medal, the highest Red Cross award for nurses and voluntary nursing aides.

The final winners will be announced in May.

Xing has been nominated for her great performance in introducing the peripherally inserted central catheter practice to China and her efforts in supporting Liangshan Seventh People's Hospital in southwestern Sichuan Province, a designated hospital for infectious disease patients, to guide local nurses on how to take care of such patients, including those with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.

A peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC), also called a PICC line, is a long, thin tube that's inserted through a vein in the arm and passed through to the larger veins near the heart. It's generally used to give medications to cancer patients or those needing liquid nutrition to help avoid the pain of frequent needle sticks.

PICC line requires careful care and monitoring for complications, including infection and blood clots.

At Liangshan hospital, nursing is extremely complicated. For HIV/AIDS patients with cancer, PICC is a very important nursing skill, as these patients' blood vessel conditions are usually very poor, and can't endure frequent needle insertions. The PICC line serves as a lifeline.

Xing was in the first batch of nurses to serve in the oncology department and introduced PICC to China and has since created many "firsts" in the field.

In the 1990s, Xing saw many Chinese cancer patients suffer redness, pain and ulceration on the hand due to frequent needle insertions.

She then introduced the PICC technology, successfully completing Shanghai's first PICC practice.

Since there was no relevant ultrasound device to guide the practice, she developed a skill without ultrasound guidance and improved the success rate from 60 percent to 90 percent.

She then promoted the technology all over the nation and set up China's first PICC nursing clinic to offer high-end and professional service to patients all over the country.

PICC needs management each week. As cancer patients are very weak and going all the way to leading hospitals is too tiring for them, Xing set up over 40 standard centers in neighborhoods to allow patients to receive PICC service near their homes.

"Serving at Liangshan hospital stemmed from an experience late last year when I participated in a charity medical move there and saw many local TB and HIV/AIDS patients having difficulty with regular intravenous treatment, especially children and the elderly," said Xing, who conducted PICC for a 5-year-old girl.

"After that, I volunteered to serve at Lianghan to teach and train local nurses on proper nursing skills and PICC practice."

The Florence Nightingale Medal is typically awarded every two years to nurses in recognition of their exceptional courage and devotion to victims of armed conflict or natural disaster. It also recognizes exemplary service or a pioneering spirit in the areas of public health or nursing education, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.