Lastly, Carter, Pallin, Mandel, Sinnette, and Schuur (2016) explored the actions of nurse leaders that facilitated clinical nurses active involvement in emergency department (ED) catheter associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) prevention programs. The emergency department is where urinary catheters are often inserted making patients at risk for CAUTI’s. Nurses are the principal champions of ED CAUTI prevention programs. This study consisted of 52 interviews and 9 focus groups that were analyzed across 6 enrolled EDs. The method of this study explored CAUTI prevention activities of early-adopting EDs, who already used criteria to guide urinary catheter placement decisions and tracked decreases in ED- inserted urinary catheters. The study consisted of focus groups and semi-structured interviews with participants.
The focus groups were conducted during full-day site visits and interviews were conducted via telephone and in-person during site visits. The focus groups use a conventional content analysis and to synthesize data across transcripts they developed site summaries. The results of this study found that ED and hospital staff managers were the principle champions of ED CAUTI prevention programs, playing a more critical role than physicians or infection preventionists. Nurse leaders were primarily responsible for clinical nurses active involvement in ED CAUTI prevention programs and successfully engaging clinical nurses by not inserting catheters as it increases the patients risk for infection, discussing and brain storming preventive strategies to decrease CAUTIs, and making ED clinical nurses aware of important CAUTI measures within the past month during huddles and floor meetings.
