Essay On Cauti

The routine usage of Foley catheters has increase, especially on critical care floors due to strict monitoring of the patient’s intake and output status. Usually, patients on this type of floor are respiratory compromised, on the ventilator and receiving diuretics. In addition, a large number of patients experience delirium making it impossible to get them out bed to a bedside commode. These are a few reasons why an indwelling Foley catheter is essential to have. However, when a patient’s health status has improved, there are still a high number of catheters remaining indwelling leading to a higher instance of catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI). Evidence-based research on CAUTI has shown that the early discontinuations of Foley catheters are better for patient outcomes. According to Smakulski et al. (2015), CAUTI is a problematic in almost every healthcare facility, affecting just about every unit. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2016), list CAUTI as the fourth most common hospital acquired infection or about 93,300 urinary tract infections (UTI’s) leading to 13,000 deaths annually. Prevention of CAUTI is the key. No exact data on when CAUTI was first discovered, but with the emergence of evidence-base practice, more attention has been drawn on the commonness of CAUTI. …show more content…
Emphasis needs to be placed on the nurses and doctors to question whether the Foleys can come out and the necessary actions taken. Clearly, the issue of CAUTI needs to be recognized to decrease hospital acquired infection rates and preventable death rates. My focus will be to implement CAUTI on all the units at my facility, especially on the critical care floor because of the prevalence of the