Any health institution inspiring to offer safe, quality care and meet the desires of its stakeholders, it has to look for new strategies which will improve efficiency and effectiveness of the clinical practices. Additionally, the dynamic of the healthcare setting regarding the introduction of new technologies, policies, regulations, and clinical procedures, makes change inevitable (Riekert et al., 2013). Therefore, to offer quality care that meets patient’s expectations and free from infections, continuous improvement is necessary. Thus, nurses need to be on the look-out and identify factors that can hinder achieving utmost patients’ outcome and propose solutions to overcome the barriers identified (Riekert et al., 2013). As such, nurses ought to be an agent of change by proposing new practices, procedures, and policies which will enhance service delivery to patients. Additionally, a nurse can be an agent of change by volunteering to be part of the team which will have the responsibility of implementing the proposed change.
Prevalence of urinary track infections is a common hospital acquired infections which normally occur after placement of the catheter (Mody et al., 2015). These infections not only are they costly to the hospital but also to the patient. Therefore, to reduce the number of infections associated with Foley Catheter, it is essential to employee a number of prevention strategies to address the problem (Mody et al., 2015). These interventions might be implemented at different stages in a nursing career from a new graduate to a nurse administrator.
A new graduate can be an agent of change by offering education on the proper use and the skills health practitioners need to have in catheter placement. As such, the new graduate can write articles, journals place them where other caregiver and patients can access, for example on the hospital website, notice board or magazine. After the two years experience, the nurse can initiate culture and behavioral change such as catheter removal protocols and procedures which every health practitioners must adhere to as they discharge their duties (Shekelle et al., 2013). After gaining considerable experience for instance after five years, a nurse can propose the use of a certain technology or adoption of certain procedures to prevent any complications associated with Foley catheter use (Shekelle et al., 2013). After ten eyes of experience and being a nurse manager, the administrator can initiate a program which will mainly be used for research, educate new graduates, develop mechanisms that can be used to monitor possible complications to avoid a worse scenario which might be life threatening to the patient.
Reference
Mody, L., Meddings, J., Edson, B. S., McNamara, S. E., Trautner, B. W., Stone, N. D., & Saint, S. (2015). Enhancing resident safety by preventing healthcare-associated infection: a national initiative to reduce catheter-associated urinary tract infections in nursing homes. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 61(1), 86-94.
Riekert, K. A., Ockene, J. K., & Pbert, L. (Eds.). (2013). The handbook of health behavior change. Springer Publishing Company.
Shekelle, P. G., Wachter, R. M., Pronovost, P. J., Schoelles, K., McDonald, K. M., Dy, S. M., & Larkin, J. W. (2013). Making health care safer II: an updated critical analysis of the evidence for patient safety practices. Evidence report/technology assessment, (211), 1-945.
