New Blog from Karen Anderson on Indwelling urinary catheter 'free' inpatient service

We talk to Karen Anderson,  Head of Infection Prevention and Control/Decontamination Lead at Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust who took part in the Best Practice Poster competition in November 2016 with their poster about the indwelling urinary catheter ‘free’ inpatient service.
 
Karen explains about the project. “The project stems from the Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) action plan in 2010 which stated that there should be 50% reduction of infections from indwelling catheter by 2013 and from us attending the ​Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) training from South West Academic Health Science Network (SW AHSN). The aim of our project was to promote an indwelling catheter free inpatient service, which would lead to a reduction of risk of the patient acquiring urinary tract infection (UTI) linked to the device. We had done some IHI training and loved it. We used the IHI’s Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) Worksheet to put together a very small PDSA of our own, which was to ensure that all patients were assessed within 48 hours and to attempt trial without catheter (TWOC) – if clinically indicated and with the patient’s consent.
We undertook the first trial in one of our hospitals and found that the training could do with some updating, so we redid the training, which really helped the process.  We had a really excellent change agent there and the reaction was really good. After our first trial, we drove the project out during 12 weeks and achieved a 96% success rate, which we were delighted with!  We then took on a new member of staff to lead the implementation process across 13 community hospitals. It has taken 2 years, and has been done really methodically. We can’t thank SW AHSN and the IHI enough for the processes we learned which have enabled us to succeed with his project. We are now looking at rolling this out across the community.”