Reducing catheter-associated urinary tract infections using a multimodal approach — the NSQIP experience of Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital

Summary: Catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) cause significant morbidity and mortality in the surgical population as well as significant costs to health care. It can be surprisingly difficult to address this common complication without a multifaceted, multimodal team-based approach to the problem. We used our National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) data on the incidence of CAUTI in our "procedure targeted" and "essentials" general surgery and orthopedic surgery cases before and after the implementation of our reduction strategy and found a significant improvement. This article discusses our multimodal approach to CAUTI.