American journal of infection control
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Am J Infect Control · Dec 2017
Successful strategy to decrease indwelling catheter utilization rates in an academic medical intensive care unit.
Duration of indwelling urinary catheterization is an important risk factor for urinary tract infections. We devised a strategy to decrease the utilization of indwelling urinary catheters (IUCs). We also highlight the challenges of managing critically ill patients without IUCs and demonstrate some of the initiatives that we undertook to overcome these challenges. ⋯ Our interventions demonstrated that aggressive and comprehensive IUC restriction protocol and provider training can lead to a successful decrease in IUC use, leading to a lower IUC utilization ratio and CAUTI rate in a large complex academic ICU setting.