The effect of urinary catheter care bundle compliance on catheter-associated urinary tract infections

Objective: Healthcare-associated infections (HAI) are a global problem of increasing importance all over the world. HAI’s, Results: Urinary catheter care bundle compliance and standardized infection rates (SIR) of CA-UTI were assessed between June 2015 and December 2020. In 2015, bundle compliance was 0.80 (0.75-0.83), 0.88 (0.84-0.90) in 2016, 0.89 (0.87-0.91) in 2017, 0.90 (0.88-0.91) in 2018, 0.88 (0.85-0.89) in 2019, and 0.87 (0.84-0.88) in 2020. CA-UTI SIRs were 4.06 in 2015, 2.91 in 2016, 2.3 in 2017, 1.52 in 2018, 1.74 in 2019, and 2.81 in 2020. When the effect of the urinary catheter care bundle (in the years 2015-2018) is analyzed, it corresponds to a reduction of approximately 60%. “Catheter cleaning twice a day with a soapy sponge” was found to have the lowest compliance across all years. Conclusion: We observed that as bundle compliance increased, our CA-UTI rate decreased. However, the fact that our SIR values are >1 indicates that our infection control measures are inadequate. These findings imply that bundle components should be reviewed and/or that bundle compliance observation is lacking. Bundles can be used as an incentive to provide consistent and disciplined maintenance, but they are only one component of a larger improvement strategy. While main infection control systems (such as isolation, surveillance, and hand hygiene) are in routine, bundle applications should be integrated into these systems.