San Francisco Career Fair Speaker
 “Taps Into” Crucial Need

For the past 22 years, Sue Masoorli, RN, has made a successful career out of helping fill the need for nurses who are skilled in infusion therapy.

In 1987, Masoorli, who had been the nurse manager of an IV team for 10 years and done home infusion for the previous five, founded Perivascular Nurse Consultants Inc., whose staff set up infusion therapy at home visits. She was thrown a curve ball in the 1990s when insurance companies stopped reimbursing home care nurses for the insertion of peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC) lines. But by then, the company had also started an education component. Although the home care component of the business had generated most of the revenue, the market had changed — so Masoorli’s business changed along with it.

Changing With the Times
Today, the Philadelphia-based company focuses solely on education. Perivascular Nurse Consultants hosts classes and seminars nationwide and develops training videos and workbooks for healthcare professionals on how to properly place IVs and PICC lines. Masoorli, the president and CEO of the company, estimates it holds about 150 classes and trains roughly 3,000 nurses each year.

Perivascular Nurse Consultants’ focus on education has paid off. Three of the company’s training videos — ones on venipuncture, phlebotomy, and PICC line insertion — earned awards from the American Nurses Association.

With the company’s success has come individual success for Masoorli, who received an award from the American Cancer Society for her volunteer work. Additionally, she serves as an expert witness in nursing malpractice infusion cases.

Opportunities to Transform
Not only does Masoorli enjoy helping people get well, but “there are so many opportunities [in nursing], so many doors you can go through,” she says, adding that nurses can find their own niche and start their own business.

Since Masoorli found her niche, she says what she likes best is seeing the students in her classes gain both knowledge and confidence. At the beginning of a session, some healthcare professionals doubt their ability to learn how to perform an infusion. “But then you see the light bulb go on, and they really get it,” she says. “At the end of the day, they learn how to find the vein and insert the catheter.”

Reaching Further

Masoorli says the company’s biggest challenge is contacting and training even more healthcare professionals. She hopes to eventually get closer to achieving this goal by developing an online program that addresses the complications of IV insertion.

After all, “there are always advances, always changes [in nursing],” she says. “There is always something exciting happening.”

Rebecca Ray is the managing editor of NurseWeek’s California edition. 
To comment, e-mail editorCA@nurseweek.com.