what is your hospital trying to prevent them?

UTI prevention is one of our quality indicators so we keep a very close eye on it. When we started the initiative a few years ago we required every nurse to complete training which included a hands-on portion with models on proper foley catheter insertion and care.

In the ICUs I am reaponsible for we track certain items on every patient daily and one of them is if they have a Foley and if it is still needed - getting them out asap is one of our major focuses.

We also ensure that every foley has a securement device - we use the Stat-Lock and had them attached by the company to every Foley insertion tray and foley bag in the hospital, so that when a new one is opened it makes compliance really simple - it's right there. We also stock Foley leg straps for those patients in which an adhesive securement device is contra-indicated.

Our infection control service also tracks, per CDC criteria, every UTI in our units and we perform case reviews for every single one.

we have stat locks too and out uti rates are still the highest in the hospital! we also started cath care q12 hours....foley 4s as i call it! i think it is our patient population (neuro icu)....the urology group at our hospital does not like the stat locks, so they are not on their patients and they never get utis. instead we have are using tape to secure foleys in our unit to see if it makes a difference...unc decreased their foley days but utis did not decrease.....anything else to recommend?

did having stat locks and getting rid of the foleys decrease rates at your hospital?

I honestly think that the two things that had the biggest impact on our UTI rates were ensuring strict sterile technique when placing them (we found higher UTI rates in Foley's that were placed in our trauma bay so we focused on those nurses especially) and taking them out as soon as possible - even if we ended up using some texas catheters on the males - getting them out really did help.

Also - we found that when we got nursing home patients or homless, ect at our other division that they sometimes came in with a UTI and because we put a Foley in we were getting "charged" with that UTI - now in certain populations we do a UA to screen before we place a foley.