Colleagues,
Happy New Year! In our ongoing efforts to improve patient safety at UCSF, we disseminate a monthly patient safety bulletin. In this issue, we highlight the importance of preventing catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) and our new protocol for removal of foley catheters.
Urinary tract infections (UTIs) account for a significant proportion of hospital-associated infections at UCSF. Although we had some improvement in CAUTI rates after implementation of the reflex urinalysis for urine culture protocol, we still have over 7 CAUTIs per month among adult inpatients—about 20% more than we would expect based on the risk-adjusted, benchmark national data used by the CDC and CMS.
Preventing CAUTIs requires a multidisciplinary, multimodal effort aimed at minimizing unnecessary use of catheters and optimizing insertion technique and catheter maintenance. In late February/early March, we are rolling out a nurse driven protocol (NDP) for urinary catheter removal to empower nurses to remove catheters that are no longer needed using standardized criteria.
Thank you for your ongoing commitment to patient safety at UCSF.
Adrienne Green, MD
Chief Medical Officer, Adult Services
Vice President, Patient Safety and Regulatory Affairs
UCSF Health