Epidemiologic Study Design, Essay Example

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are one of the most widespread hospital-acquired infections, where many are associated with an indwelling catheter. Catheter associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) represent the largest percentage of healthcare associated infections (HAIs). For every day a catheter is in place, the risk of developing CAUTIs increased approximately 3-7%. It is estimated that 25% of hospitalized patients are catheterized, and about 10% develop UTIs (American Association of Critical Care Nurses, 2012).

The epidemiologic study design that will be appropriate will be a pre/post intervention design towards improvement to test the effect of nurse-driven interventions founded on present evidence-based practice to decrease CAUTIs in hospitalized patients on two medical/surgical units. The design of study will ensure that the interventions will include hospital-wide strategies, comprising policy, as well as product improvements and unit-specific approaches, which are focused on the assessment of the present evidence that will guide the practice. Evidence-based practice guidelines accrued current research, valid, and other evidence sources may successfully enhance patient outcomes and quality care. Furthermore, employing pre/post intervention design will assess the impact of multifaceted, nurse-driven intervention, which will incorporate EBP that will champion change, clinical nursing personnel, certified nursing assistants, and families to lower CAUTIs in hospitalized patients. The study design emphasizes the fact that learning how to implement findings is critically vital to promoting high quality and safe care among the patients (Loeb et al, 2008).

The source’s strength is that it will collect first-hand information from the patients and nurses that will be used for improvement purposes because they are founded evidence-based practices. The sources use the current data and a number of statistics to support the evidence of the study. However, one of the weaknesses of the sources is their failure to include possible factors that results to CAUTIs.

References

American Association of Critical Care Nurses. (2012). Cathter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections. AACN Bold Voices, 13.

Bernard, M., Hunter, K., & Moore, K. (2012). Review of strategies to decrease the duration of indwelling urethral catheters and reduce the incidence of catheter associated UTI. Urologic Nursing, 29-37.

Loeb M, Hunt D, O’Halloran K, Carusone S.C, Dafoe N, Walter S.D. (2008). Stop orders to reduce  inappropriate  urinary  catheterization  in  hospitalized  patients: a randomized controlled trial. J Gen Intern Med. 23:816-20.