Urinary Catheter Days Essay

Urinary Catheter Days
Catheter Acquired Urinary Tract Infections (CAUTIs) has become to be classified as one among the leading infections which most individuals end up being susceptible to acquire while at the hospital. Healthcare-associated or acquired infections (HAIs) are a significant cause of illness, death, and more often than not, have resulted to cost the tax payers potentially high medical expenses in most health care settings. ("Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality," para. 1) Due to this, 1 out of every 20 patients will end up with CAUTI within the US hospitals and this has caused Agency for healthcare research and quality (AHRQ) to embark on nationwide plans to help in the eradication and control of CAUTI incidences. ("Agency

5), many hospitals in conjunction with the Joint Commission's 2012 National Patient Safety Goals has been rallying for hospitals to use evidenced-based practices (EBP) to the prevention of CAUTIs because evidence is growing showing that many are avoidable. Such practices such as utilizing a nurse-driven protocol to assess and evaluate the appropriateness and use of urethral catheter to determine how long a patient should have an indwelling catheter and when to discontinue it. Several factors have been identified that pose as risk factors to CAUTI which include but not limited to drainage bag not being below the level of the bladder, healthcare personnel not practicing standard precautions and utilizing aseptic techniques during insertion of catheters, unsterile equipment, and unnecessary placement of urinary

Different studies had different result numbers or different percentage reduction rates which was primarily based on their indifferences in regards to study design utilized and sample size. As evidenced by research results (Magers, June 2013) and (Welden, 2013), these showed a reduction of urinary catheter days resulted in reduced CAUTI rates. Though different outcome results between the different research studies, they all strongly significantly supported the notion that a nurse-driven protocol to assess and evaluate the appropriateness and use of urethral catheter compared with a no protocol is essential to help in the reduction of CAUTIs. Interpreting these results, (Meddings et al., 2013) showed a drop greater than 52% in CAUTIs and a decrease in catheterization by 37%. The study results from the six scholarly research study articles showed nearly similar or corresponding outcomes. The results were significant enough to support the PICO question. In general, though the difference in sample size, the results still strongly supported excellent outcomes when a nurse-driven protocol is used to evaluate the necessity of continued urethral catheter use. (Chen et al., 2013, para.