NR 544 Week 3 Assignment; Quality Improvement Model Application - Patient Safety

Introduction and patient safety issue

Patient safety is a major area of concern for most healthcare organizations. In the US, healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are among the most common preventable mortality causes. Of the different types of HAIs, urinary tract infections (UTIs) are the most common, in which about three quarters of them are associated with a urinary catheter, leading to development of catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015), which will be the safety issue discussed in this paper. Over 560, 000 patients develop CAUTI in the US every year leading to increased length of stay (LOS), healthcare costs as well as patient mortality and morbidity.

Background and scope of the problem

UTIs related to catheter use develop after microbial pathogens enter the urinary tract through the extraluminal route or through the intraluminal route (Ferguson, 2018). The former implies that the pathogens along the outer part of the catheter while the latter implies that the pathogens migrate along the inner part of the catheter. The pathogens that lead to CAUTI can be from rectal, vaginal, or meatal colonization or from contaminated hands from the provider handling the catheter.

Given the statistics above about CAUTI in the US, the safety issue has become a major topic of discussion among healthcare policy makers. Up to a quarter of all hospitalized patients may require urinary catheters during their stay in the hospital, thus increasing their risk of developing CAUTI mainly due to prolonged use. Compared to other HAIs, CAUTI has a lower mortality and morbidity rate; however, he prevalence of using urinary catheters is high leading to higher cumulative burden associated with infections. Surprisingly, CAUTI, like other types of HAIs is preventable. Indeed, it is reported that up to 69% of all CAUTI causes are preventable by following the recommended procedures and guidelines when inserting urinary catheters (CDC, 2015). If so, this would imply preventing about 380,000 infections and 9000 deaths in the US per year................... Continue