Standard practices for tracking the daily number of patients with urinary catheters in a hospital may be inaccurate, according to a study in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.
Researchers examined urinary catheter use in two Veterans Affairs hospitals in Texas from July 2010 through June 2011. The researchers compared the number of urinary catheter days gleaned from chart review with the number collected from standard methods of catheter surveillance and reporting by infection control personnel.
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The urinary catheter days reported to the infection control department did not include 20.1 percent of the actual days of indwelling catheter use. In addition, 12 percent of the department's reported catheter days were incorrect, according to the study.
The authors concluded that standard practices for measuring urinary catheter days were unreliable.
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