Nurses’ knowledge about the catheter-associated urinary tract infection

Introduction
Catheter-associated urinary tract infection is an important complication of hospital treatment. It represents over 40% of the total number of nosocomial infections. Factors influencing the development of infection include the time of catheter support in the urinary bladder, female sex, concomitant diseases, the type of biomaterial from which the catheter is made of, microorganisms and bacterial biofilm. The main etiologic factors are bacteria, mainly Gram (-) intestinal bacteria from the Enterobacteriaceae family.

Aim of the study
Analysis of nurses’ knowledge on the topic of urinary tract infection.

Material and methods
The research included 110 people of nursing staff, including 102 women and 8 men working in hospitals in Warsaw. The study used the method of a diagnostic survey with a questionnaire technique. The research tool was the author’s questionnaire, which contained 27 questions. The questions were closed-ended and grouped into three categories: knowledge of urinary tract infections, procedures for setting up a urinary catheter, and patient care with a catheter inserted into the bladder. The results of the research were subjected to statistical analysis. The analysis of variance and the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient were used to check the dependence between variables. The analysis was performed at the significance level of p< 0.05 in Excel and SPSS.

Results
The surveyed nursing staff did not demonstrate a high level of knowledge in each of the categories examined regarding the urinary tract infection. The difference in averages between categories and is statistically significant in general. The highest results were obtained from the basic knowledge of urinary tract infections, while the lowest results from the care of a patient with a bladder catheter.

Conclusions
The level of knowledge of nursing staff in the field of catheter-associated urinary tract infection is insufficient. Working nursing staff requires training in the prevention of urinary tract infections.