At the last survey of acute hospitals in Scotland in 2016, a quarter of all hospital acquired infections were found to be caused by urinary catheters. For this reason, Healthcare Improvement Scotland is beginning to target the safe management of urinary catheters through inspections of acute hospitals. Urinary catheters are used to enable short or long term bladder drainage and around 20% of patients in acute hospitals have urinary catheters installed. However, their use is associated with an increased risk of infections by enabling micro organisms to gain entry to the bladder. These new inspections build on the quality assurance programme that has been carried out since 2009 to improve the safety and cleanliness of Scotland’s hospitals. In that time Scotland has seen an…
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