Nurses Rewarded for Reducing UTIs in Patients

• Nursing units at Fox Chase Cancer Center were recently rewarded with a sweet treat after their work led to a significant decrease in catheter-associated urinary tract infections in patients.

  Over the last year, nursing units at Fox Chase have been working hard to reduce the number of infections by using the HOUDINI protocol and the nursing care bundle, a set of interventions performed to improve outcome. HOUDINI is an acronym where each letter represents a different reason a nurse should not remove a catheter. Both HOUDINI and the nursing care bundle proved to be a success.“There was a really significant reduction in the amount of infections,” says Kathy Wolf, Director of Magnet/Nursing Quality at Fox Chase.

  Mary Ellen Morba, Director of Performance Improvement/Clinical Value at Fox Chase, leads a workgroup that has been dedicated to the reduction efforts. The workgroup wanted to find a way to thank the nurses for their hard work and dedication that resulted in improvement to the patient outcome measure. On March 24, Harry Houdini’s birthday, ten different nursing units received a bundle of Hershey’s candy bars. See the brochure here!