(1262) Multidisciplinary Quality Improvement Project to Reduce CAUTIs

Introduction: Catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) account for 75% of hospital-acquired infections. The burden of CAUTIs negatively impacts the well-being of patients and healthcare organizations. Regulatory bodies hold healthcare facilities financially accountable for hospital-acquired infections using quality performance metrics. The desired outcome of this performance improvement project was to reduce the overall CAUTI standardized infection ratio of the medical intensive care unit. The use of unit-based, interdisciplinary targeted rounds was the method employed.

Methods: Inter-professional targeted rounds were performed twice a day over a three-month period for all patients in an academic medical intensive care unit. A daily worksheet was developed to track demographics, device necessity, removal plan, protocol compliance, and data trends. Additional strategies to optimize the staff’s education of the nurse driven urinary catheter removal and retention protocols included a bulletin board, email, just in time education, incentivizing staff, huddles, and staff meetings. Outcomes were collected by a third-party analyst (infection control) for hospital quality analysis and state reporting. Data for this project was generated from de-identified hospital monthly reports.

Results: The targeted rounds improved staff knowledge and compliance with CAUTI related policies, procedures and algorithms related to indwelling urinary catheter necessity and infection rates. The unit incidence of CAUTI rates was 1.04 at the beginning of the project. The project outcomes at the unit level drove the standardized infection ratio to zero for three consecutive months and counting.

Conclusions: Increased inter-professional collaboration among physicians, advanced practice providers, nursing leaders, nurse educators, bedside nurses, and infection control specialists enhanced communication regarding CAUTI prevention strategies and reduced CAUTI rate. Our findings suggest this initiative will be applicable to other quality healthcare metrics.