If your long-term-care customers are having difficulty controlling catheter-associated urinary tract infections, refer them to the “Toolkit To Reduce CAUTI and other HAIs in Long-Term Care Facilities,” from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Based on principles and methods from the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP), the toolkit provides resources to enhance leadership and staff engagement, teamwork, and safety culture, in order to facilitate consistent use of evidence-based practices.
The toolkit includes instructional materials and resources in infection prevention best practices (e.g., foundational infection prevention strategies, CAUTI prevention, antibiotic stewardship), resident and family engagement, quality improvement, and sustainability to guide the facility through implementing an improvement project to reduce healthcare-associated infections. The toolkit’s resources were used by long-term-care facilities that participated in the AHRQ Safety Program for Long-Term Care: HAIs/CAUTI, which successfully reduced rates of catheter-associated urinary tract infections.
The toolkit is organized into three main sections, which facilities can use to implement an improvement project to reduce CAUTI and other HAIs. Each section contains guides, tools, slide sets, and videos to support implementation.
- The guide provides guidance about how to start and implement a program, as well as information about the Long-Term Care Safety Toolkit Modules, educational bundles and other resources to facilitate implementation.
- The guide provides long-term-care facility teams with an overview of how to successfully sustain improvements made during and after a project is implemented.
- This section aggregates all of the instructional guidance, tools, and resources cited throughout the project.
The Toolkit may be accessed at https://www.ahrq.gov/professionals/quality-patient-safety/quality-resources/tools/cauti-ltc/index.html