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Hospital-acquired conditions, such as Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections (CAUTIs), pose significant challenges to patient safety and healthcare quality. It is important to identify the causes of these infections to prevent them in the future as they pose a great threat to the society. Quantitative research is, therefore, a useful method of trying to understand these issues because it helps to give voice to healthcare professionals involved in the care of patients (Kranz et al., 2020). This research can uncover details concerning the essence of clinical practices, environmental circumstances and organizational working that leads to CAUTIs and hence assist in formulation of efficient interventions and policies that can prevent such occurrences.
How do healthcare professionals perceive the factors contributing to the development of CAUTIs in hospital settings?
This research question aims at finding out the knowledge, perceptions and practice of various categories of healthcare professionals including nurses, physicians and infection control practitioners as to the causes of development of CAUTIs. It is to identify the factors that may complicate the patient care practices, infection control measures, staff knowledge, and resources that have impact on infection rates in the healthcare organizations (Kranz et al., 2020). The study is designed to explore these professionals’ subjective experiences and perceptions of the existing prevention practices in order to assess the existing practices’ effectiveness and search for areas of their improvement in order to decrease the frequency of CAUTIs, and consequently, increase patients’ safety.
The most suitable method for answering this research question would be a phenomenological method since this research seeks to establish the lived experiences and perceptions of healthcare professionals with regard to the factors contributing to the occurrence of CAUTIs in hospitals (Shadle et al., 2021). Phenomenology is concerned with the interpretation of the meaning of experiences from the point of view of those who are in a direct contact with the phenomena in question, such as nurses, doctors, and other health care workers who deal with the patients.
It is especially suitable in this regard because it enables consideration of attitudinal, belief, and practice variables, which cannot be captured adequately through metrics and quantification. That way, the researchers are better able to understand distinct interpersonal interactions between clinical processes, physical environment, and human actions that lead to the development of CAUTIs (Musco et al., 2022). This methodology also focuses on discovering other opportunities for potential improvement in case there are potential problems with knowledge transfer, communication or training that is not reflected in the numbers. Also, phenomenology can uncover a qualitative facet of healthcare practice like stress or decision-making challenges with reference to infection control practices. In general, this approach provides increased understanding of the experience of healthcare professionals, which may help to design better interventions aimed at decreasing CAUTIs.
In-Depth Interviews: Hyperlink 9 Conduct focus group discussion with different levels of healthcare workers including nurses, physicians, and infection control officer to elicit their views on the causes and risk factors to the development of CAUTIs (Atkins et al., 2020). These questions will provide opportunities for participants to give their view fully, and develop themes in relation to hospital practices, staff behaviour and patients characteristics.
Focus Groups: Hold focus group discussions with other caregivers involved in patients care such as nurses, nursing aides and workers in the infection control department. This will encourage discussions on what others have experienced, what others have encountered and what has been done to avoid occurrences of CAUTIs. Thus, using focus groups one can have more diverse views and can find out individual as well as group level factors leading to the infection. Participant Observation: Observe the participants in wards where implementation of catheterization and catheter care is done. Further, the observation process will give the researcher another perspective to understand the practices and procedures in the context and to compare them with the data collected from survey and focus group interviews (Werneburg, 2022). These methodologies and data collection strategies will facilitate gain an understanding of the factors that lead to the development of CAUTIs from the caregivers’ point of view.
Targeted data collection can be said to be very important in the development of a research plan as it helps in reducing the likelihood of collecting irrelevant data which might lead to invalid or unreliable results. By deciding on the certain data sources and types, one eliminates the need to gather the excess information, which is beneficial in terms of analysis and drawing the correct conclusion (Rubi et al., 2022). It also helps in defining patterns and themes that are specific to the research objectives and hence the results are more relevant and tangible.
Targeted data collection is also useful in several ways in relation to a qualitative research question such as perceptions of healthcare professionals regarding factors that contribute to CAUTIs as follows (Yuan et al., 2021). For instance, interviewing the nurses and physicians or conducting focus group research provides the qualitative data that are rich in contexts and describe the experience and struggles of the practitioners in the area of infection control.
However, what is positive in targeted data collection is that it may also have its drawbacks. Some participant groups may be difficult to access because of issues to do with privacy or organizational affiliation (Van Decker et al., 2021). Also, collecting subjective data may result in a number of biases, reaching data saturation when no further information is gathered may take some time and is costly. These considerations are properly planned such that the data collected to respond to the research question are well responsive to the challenges hence improving on the quality of the study.
CAUTIs are among the hospital-acquired conditions that are greatly affecting patient safety and health care quality. This is because it’s only possible to come up with appropriate measures of preventing these infections if one has a clue of what may be causing them. One methodological approach that can be useful in studying these issues is to use methods of qualitative research as they would allow to reveal the attitudes and experiences of the healthcare staff that is directly involved in the treatment of patients. This exploration can help identify the factors that underlie the clinical practices, environment and organisations that contribute to CAUTIs and inform the creation of specific intervention and policies that can eliminate these.
Atkins, L., Sallis, A., Chadborn, T., Shaw, K., Schneider, A., Hopkins, S., Bunten, A., Michie, S., & Lorencatto, F. (2020). Reducing catheter-associated urinary tract infections: A systematic review of barriers and facilitators and strategic behavioural analysis of interventions. Implementation Science, 15(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-020-01001-2
Kranz, J., Schmidt, S., Wagenlehner, F., & Schneidewind, L. (2020). Catheter-associated urinary tract infections in adult patients—preventive strategies and treatment options. Deutsches Aerzteblatt Online, 117(6). https://doi.org/10.3238/arztebl.2020.0083
Musco, S., Giammò, A., Savoca, F., Gemma, L., Geretto, P., Soligo, M., Sacco, E., Del Popolo, G., & Li Marzi, V. (2022). How to prevent catheter-associated urinary tract infections: A reappraisal of vico’s theory—is history repeating itself? Journal of Clinical Medicine, 11(12), 3415. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm11123415
Oumer, Y., Dadi, B. R., Seid, M., Biresaw, G., & Manilal, A. (2021). Catheter-associated urinary tract infection: Incidence, associated factors and drug resistance patterns of bacterial isolates in Southern Ethiopia. Infection and Drug Resistance, 14, 2883–2894. https://doi.org/10.2147/IDR.S311229
Rubi, H., Mudey, G., & Kunjalwar, R. (2022). Catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI). Cureus, 14(10). https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.30385
Shadle, H. N., Sabol, V., Smith, A., Stafford, H., Thompson, J. A., & Bowers, M. (2021). A bundle-based approach to prevent catheter-associated urinary tract infections in the intensive care unit. Critical Care Nurse, 41(2), 62–71. https://doi.org/10.4037/ccn2021934
Van Decker, S. G., Bosch, N., & Murphy, J. (2021). Catheter-associated urinary tract infection reduction in critical care units: A bundled care model. British Medical Journal Open Quality, 10(4). https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjoq-2021-001534
Werneburg, G. T. (2022). Catheter-associated urinary tract infections: Current challenges and future prospects. Research and Reports in Urology, 14(14), 109–133. https://doi.org/10.2147/rru.s273663
Yuan, F., Huang, Z., Yang, T., Wang, G., Li, P., Yang, B., & Li, J. (2021). Pathogenesis of Proteus mirabilis in catheter-associated urinary tract infections. Urologia Internationalis, 105(5-6), 354–361. https://doi.org/10.1159/000514097
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