Improving Nurses’ Knowledge about Prevention of Catheter Acquired Urinary Tract Infections in Intensive Care Units

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Lack of knowledge about causes and strategies to prevent catheter-acquired urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) requires an intervention that focuses on providing all evidence-based information to decrease the incidence of CAUTIs in admitted intensive care units (ICU) patients. Improving the nurses’ knowledge will eventually help in the reduction of CAUTIs. AIM: We aimed to investigate the improving nurses’ knowledge about prevention of catheter acquired urinary tract infections in intensive care units. METHODS: The present study is a h ealth system-operational research, pre-test–post-test design with a control arm study. The study was conducted in two ICU units in one of the University hospitals, Cairo, Egypt, involving a total sample of 42 nurses. Self-administered questionnaires were used to assess nurses’ knowledge about CAUTIs. The intervention was implemented through on job educational training sessions to nursing staff. Cochran Q was used to test the effect of the intervention on a satisfactory level of knowledge. RESULTS: Knowledge score improved from 61.4 ± 14.1 in pre-test to 90.5 in the early post-test (EP) test done after 1 week to 91.3 in late post-test ( LP) done after 1 month among nurses of the intervention ICU (p < 0.001). The percentage of nurses reporting a satisfactory level of knowledge significantly increased from 13.3% in the pre-test to 90% and 93.3% in follow-up (EP and LP, respectively) in the intervention ICU (p < 0.05) CONCLUSION: The implemented training and education strategy used were effectively improved ICU nurses’ knowledge concerning CAUTI.