Research is used to generate new knowledge about the effect of medicine, treatme

Research is used to generate new knowledge about the effect of medicine, treatment, or procedure, whereas quality improvement is improving on something that is already in place (Ambrose et al, 2022). Every shift, our clinical shift manager collects information about patients who have foley catheters and central lines. Included in the info collected are how many patients have those, how many days they have it, and medical reason for still having it. Every day, the primary care physician puts orders on the electronic medical record either to continue and the medical reason for keeping it, or to discontinue. Having most of our patients in ICU having F/C and CL, we work closely with the hospital’s Infection Control department for monitoring Central Line Associated Bloodstream Infection (CLABSI) and Catheter Associated Urinary Tract Infection. Whenever a case is identified, together with an internal Incident Report, prompts the Infection Department together with the ICU director and clinical shift managers to perform an internal review or Root Cause Analysis. Common causes attributed to CLABSI are not changing caps on central line ports after each use such as blood draws, missing central line changes every 7 days and as needed, and inappropriate duration of central line use. In addition, missing the routine every 3 days change of IV tubings may be pointed as culprits. If appropriate, femoral central lines are changed to internal jugular lines or PICC lines or change to standard short term use peripheral IV lines when able to do so and more appropriate. Regarding prevention of CAUTI, our hospital procured alternatives such as Purewick for women and condom cath is available for men. There might be other unique set of risk factors associated with each individual case, and generated data during the review are disseminated to staff during shift huddles for reminders.
Reference
Ambrose, J., Helbig, J., Ryan, C., & Torres, E., (2022). Applied Statistics in Health Care (2nd edition). Grand Canyon University (Ed). http://bibliu.com