Using Evidence-Based Practices for CAUTI Prevention
Aspen University
HUM410 – Academic Success: Strengthening Scholarly Writing
Abstract
Healthcare-associated infections are a major cause of sickness and death in the United States (HAIs). 36% of all HAIs are caused by infections in the urinary tract (called UTIs). It is thought that each HAI costs between $750 and $1,000, and that the annual cost in the US is between $340 and $450 million. In 2008, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services added catheter-acquired urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) to the list of things that should never happen. This was done to improve patient safety. Using antibiotics to treat UTIs that don’t have any symptoms may make a Clostridium difficile infection worse. In the US, about 13,000 people died from UTIs in 2007. This is a 2.3% death rate. When a person with a CAUTI gets a second bloodstream infection, the chance of dying goes up to about 10%. (Abubakar, Boehnke, Burnett, & Smith, 2021). Due to the lack of reimbursement for CAUTIs, the health care industry spends between $340 and 450 million each year. The cost of a diagnosis, the length of a patient’s stay, and the loss of payments from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services all add up to a lot of extra costs for the healthcare industry (Hollenbeak, & Schilling, 2018). The number of CAUTIs went down when nurses and doctors learned more about the disease. Another benefit of CAUTI research is that it can show the pros and cons of evidence-based practice (EBP) guidelines in the healthcare business. By focusing on their strengths, EBP guidelines may make patients safer and improve their health. Using education and the right interventions, evidence-based practice guidelines may improve patient safety and outcomes when it comes to preventing CAUTI.
Review of the literature, discussion, and conclusion
References
Abubakar, S., Boehnke, J. R., Burnett, E., & Smith, K. (2021). A systematic review of instruments used to measure how well health care workers know how to prevent catheter-related urinary tract infections. American Journal of Infection Control, 49(2), pp. 255–264.
Backman, C., Wooller, K. R., Delvina HasimjaSaraqini, Melissa, D. V., Crick, M., Danielle ChoYoung, Freeman, L., Delaney, L., and Squires, J. E. (2022). Intervention to reduce the use of urinary catheters when they aren’t needed in a large academic health science center: a one-group study with a theory-based process evaluation. Nursing Open, 9(2), 1432-1444. https://doi.org/10.1002/nop2.920
Disease Control and Prevention Centers. (October 16th, 2015). Urinary tract infections caused by catheters (CAUTI). Disease Control and Prevention Centers. Found at https://www.cdc.gov/hai/ca uti/uti.html on August 22, 2022.
Keeping infections from spreading in healthcare settings. The Iowa Department of Public Health works to protect and improve Iowans’ health (2022). Get this information from https://idph.iowa.gov/hai-prevention/information/cauti on August 22, 2022.
Hollenbeak, C. S., & Schilling, A. L. (2018). The cost of urinary tract infections caused by catheters in the United States: A systematic review. The American journal of infection control, 46(7), pages 751-757.
Juanjuan, D., Zhao, T., Dong, Y., Wang, L., Xu, P., & Xu, H. (2021). Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infection in Critically Ill Patients: Analysis of Causes and Risk Factors, as well as Research on Preventive and Nursing Measures. Biomechanics and Applied Bionics, 2021 https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/8436344
Bibliography with Notes
Abubakar, S., Boehnke, J. R., Burnett, E., & Smith, K. (2021). A systematic review of instruments used to measure how well health care workers know how to prevent catheter-related urinary tract infections. American Journal of Infection Control, 49(2), pp. 255–264.
In this article, Abubakar and his colleagues (2021) look through a lot of different databases to find randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that talk about how to prevent catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs). The authors are looking for information that will help them figure out where there are gaps in healthcare knowledge about how to prevent CAUTI. The study’s results show that there is a lot of information about how to prevent CAUTIs, but there isn’t enough information about the knowledge gap among healthcare workers to be statistically important.
Backman, C., Wooller, K. R., Delvina HasimjaSaraqini, Melissa, D. V., Crick, M., Danielle ChoYoung, Freeman, L., Delaney, L., and Squires, J. E. (2022). Intervention to reduce the use of urinary catheters when they aren’t needed in a large academic health science center: a one-group study with a theory-based process evaluation. Nursing Open, 9(2), 1432-1444. https://doi.org/10.1002/nop2.920
This article talks about a research study on a CAUTI prevention program that was used in a large Canadian hospital. The pre- and post-test method was used to figure out how well the intervention worked. After the study, the researchers didn’t find a statistically significant change in the number of CAUTI cases.
Disease Control and Prevention Centers (2015, October 16). Urinary tract infections caused by catheters (CAUTI). Disease Control and Prevention Centers. Found at https://www.cdc.gov/hai/ca uti/uti.html on August 22, 2022.
When looking for medical information, the CDC is always a good place to start, so it was important to list it as a source. This site has a lot of information about what a CAUTI is, how they happen, and how to stop them. The information on this site can help both doctors and the general public.
Keeping infections from spreading in healthcare settings. The Iowa Department of Public Health works to protect and improve Iowans’ health (2022). Get this information from https://idph.iowa.gov/hai-prevention/information/cauti on August 22, 2022.
This website was made by the Iowa Department of Public Health. It has a lot of information on how to prevent CAUTIs and other hospital-acquired infections. There are also links to other sources and information on this topic that readers can use. This site also explains what a CAUTI is to the general public.
Hollenbeak, C. S., & Schilling, A. L. (2018). The cost of urinary tract infections caused by catheters in the United States: A systematic review. The American journal of infection control, 46(7), pages 751-757.
This research article is about a study where the authors searched the PubMed database for articles published between 2000 and 2017 that met their criteria. The goal of the study was to find out how much it costs to treat CAUTI infections that could have been prevented. The study found that each patient with a CAUTI costs the hospital anywhere from $900 to well over $10,000.
Juanjuan, D., Zhao, T., Dong, Y., Wang, L., Xu, P., & Xu, H. (2021). Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infection in Critically Ill Patients: Analysis of Causes and Risk Factors, as well as Research on Preventive and Nursing Measures. Applied Bionics and Biomechanics, 2021http://doi.org/10.1155/2021/8436344
In this article, researchers looked into how common CAUTI is in the US and other countries in order to find risk factors. Also, research looked for ways to keep critically ill patients from getting worse that were backed up by evidence. This article was easy to read and full of great information that was directly related to the topic.
