Peter Carr won the City of Perth scholarship at the Perth Convention Bureau Aspire Awards.
Camera IconPeter Carr won the City of Perth scholarship at the Perth Convention Bureau Aspire Awards. Credit: Supplied/Andrew Ritchie

Researcher Peter Carr wants to put a pin in people’s needle fears

Denise S. CahillEastern Reporter

RESEARCHER Pete Carr wants to eliminate the pain and anxiety people get from needles.

Since 2006, Mr Carr has worked on reducing the number of failed attempts at inserting intravenous needles and those that fail prematurely.

“We know that up to 35 per cent of patients can sustain a first attempt failure and once there’s a successful insertion, up to 40 per cent will fail prematurely before treatment is complete,” the UWA lecturer said.

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“We want everyone to get first attempt success and we want to reduce post insertion failure.

“We focus on the emergency department first because it takes every patient entity we would see and if we get it on the first occasion for patients then we’ll have a huge impact on the hospital stay and subsequent health care.”

Mr Carr recently received the $10,000 City of Perth scholarship from the Perth Convention Bureau Aspire Program and is using it to attend the 4th World Congress on Vascular Access in Lisbon, Portugal this week.

He will use the opportunity to promote the first vascular access conference to be held in Perth next May.

Mr Carr said he hoped to get about 500 researchers, clinicians and patient support groups to the Australian Vascular Access Society 2nd Scientific Meeting at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre where he will be the scientific convenor.

The PhD student also hopes to attend conferences in Oxford and Michigan with the scholarship money.

Mr Carr said he emigrated from Ireland with his wife and children because Australia was the world leader in vascular access.

Scholarship Winners

– Tanya Langford – City of Mandurah Convention Scholarship

– Matthew Wittorff – Giving West Aspire Conference Scholarship

– Anthony Kicic – Telethon Kids Institute Aspire Conference Award

– Ute Mueller and Pere Masqué – Edith Cowan University

– David Miller – Murdoch University

– Ajmal Mian – UWA

– Joan Squelch – The University of Notre Dame Australia

– Daniel Gucciardi and Kylie Coulson – Curtin University