AHRQ Toolkit Helps Hospitals Reduce Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract infections

AHRQ released a new toolkit today to help hospital staff prevent catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) in patients and improve safety culture at the unit level. CAUTIs are healthcare-associated infections that cause suffering for approximately 250,000 hospital patients each year at a cost of about $250 million. CAUTIs are largely preventable, and stopping them can reduce the chance that hospital superbugs will develop resistance to overused antibiotics. The new Toolkit for Reducing CAUTI in Hospitals builds on the framework of the core CUSP Toolkit to help ensure that hospital teams adhere to guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It includes checklists and modifiable teaching tools and resources to help clinical teams specifically address questions about whether catheters need to be used, and, if so, to place them safely and to remove them before patients develop infections. It also includes special resources for resident physicians and nurses in intensive care units and emergency departments. The toolkit is the latest in a series of AHRQ tools and training materials that help frontline providers go beyond the “what” of improving care to actually show them “how” to make changes in workflow processes to keep patients safer.

Toolkit for Reducing CAUTI in Hospitals

The Toolkit for Reducing Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections (CAUTI) in Hospitals helps hospitals prevent CAUTI in patients and improve safety culture at the unit level by implementing concepts from the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP). Health care professionals can use it to make care safer by following clinical best practices and creating a culture of safety. The toolkit has evidence-based, practical resources that reflect the real-world experiences of the frontline providers and researchers who participated in a national implementation project to reduce CAUTIs. It builds on the coreCUSP toolkit by providing specific tools focused on reducing CAUTI in hospitals.

How To Use the Toolkit for Reducing CAUTI in Hospitals

The toolkit consists of three modules—Implementation, Sustainability, and Resources—that a hospital unit can use to teach team members how to apply CUSP to prevent CAUTI. Use of this toolkit in tandem with the AHRQ CUSP Toolkit to create or enhance a culture of patient safety can significantly decrease rates of CAUTI and other risks associated with indwelling catheter use.