Safe Practices in Patient Care

Safe Practices in Patient Care is a serial publication dedicated to helping nurses caring for the critically and chronically ill to minimize medical errors by presenting clinically and evidenced-based safe practices. Safe Practices is also an accredited home-study program and is underwritten by an educational grant from Covidien Nursing Care. 

Past issues include:

Enteral Nutrition and Hydration in Long-term Care
by Peggi Guenter, PhD, RN, CNSN

Safe Practices in Long-term Wound Care
By Catherine T. Milne, APRN, MSN, BC, CWOCN

Aspiration Pneumonia due to Enteral Tube Feeding.
by Carol McGinnis RN, MS, CNSN

Early Enteral Nutrition Following Cardiovascular Surgery.

New: Overcoming Challeges to CAUTI Prevention Online Program.

Getting Started Kit: Prevent Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections: How-to-Guide

From the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the goal of this Improvement Map is to provide useful resources to prevent urinary tract infections.

There are numerous studies of methods to prevent and reduce catheter-associated urinary tract infections, some of which date back several decades.

Over time, some recommendations have changed; for example, routine irrigation of catheters was once a recommended strategy, whereas now this is considered a practice to avoid. Thus it is essential for organizations to ensure that their policies and practices are consistent with the most current evidence-based recommendations.

This How-to Guide focuses on those recommendations with sufficient evidence to be uniformly recommended for all patients. Four components of care are recommended for all patients to prevent or reduce the risk of CA-UTI:
1. Avoid unnecessary urinary catheters.
2. Insert urinary catheters using aseptic technique.
3. Maintain urinary catheters based on recommended guidelines.
4. Review urinary catheter necessity daily and remove promptly.

http://www.ihi.org/IHI/Programs/ImprovementMap/PreventCatheterAssociatedUrinaryTractInfections.htm