Abstract

Over 30 million urinary catheters are purchased annually by hospital systems in the United States, with nearly 1 in every 4 hospitalized patients receiving an indwelling catheter during their stay.  Although a majority of placements are uncomplicated and straightforward, a significant portion can be difficult and lead to complications if the healthcare provider is not adequately trained.  These complications can range from urinary tract infections and urethral injuries to false passages requiring cystoscopy at bedside or in the operative setting. Our project aims to show that with proper education/training, nursing staff can perform successful Coude catheter placement.  This would allow for prompt patient treatment, cost-effective care, and decrease emergent urology consultations.

We trained 14 volunteering nurses from the surgical unit at our 300-bed hospital in a learning session regarding coude catheter placement.   The educational intervention’s aim was to develop knowledge and comfort with difficult catheter placement using a didactics, hands-on, and question and answer session.  Pre and post intervention questionnaires were completed regarding comfort level, perceived usefulness, and number of successes/attempts made at difficult catheter insertion.

Our preliminary data shows that all variables showed improvement and final data is now being collected on an even bigger sample size.

Using appropriate methods of instruction, we were able to demonstrate creation of a nursing team confident and competent in successful coude catheter placement.  Our next step is to reproduce this data in a larger sample size.