Catheter care and infection control

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Catheter Care and Infection Control
   1. Meatal Cleansing
   2. Managing drainage systems
   3. Catheter Valves
   4. Taking catheter specimens of urine
   5. Catheter Care Bundles
   6. Troubleshooting catheter problems
   7. Bypassing
   8. Encrustation and blockage
3. Summary
4. References

Catheter Care Bundles

A number of initiatives have been developed and implemented over recent years to reduce the incidence of CAUTI. The Department of Health have developed a catheter care bundle (DH, 2007), also known as a High Impact Intervention. The latest version of this and an audit tool to enable practitioners to evaluate their practice in relation to current guidelines (DH, 2010) is available online (http://hcai.dh.gov.uk/whatdoido/high-impact-interventions/).

Energising for Excellence (E4E) was launched in 2010 to support collaborative working to improve standards of care and complemented work already carried out with the High Impact Interventions.

CAUTI is considered a nurse sensitive indicator and is addressed within metric 3, "Protection from Infection" of the E4E programme (NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, 2012).