Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Mar 20, 2021
Date Accepted: Jan 20, 2022
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Reducing inappropriate urinary catheter use by involving patients via an app: the Participatient feasibility study
ABSTRACT
Background:
The risk of urinary tract infections is increased by the inappropriate placement and the unnecessary prolongation of use of indwelling urinary catheters. Sustained behaviour change in infection prevention could be promoted through patient empowerment trough a smartphone app.
Objective:
We aimed to assess the feasibility and efficacy of implementation actions on patients’ use of Participatient on a clinical ward, and to compare three survey methods for urinary catheter use.
Methods:
Participatient was introduced for all admitted patients at the surgical nursing ward in a university hospital in the Netherlands. In three months, the number of new app users, days of use, and sessions were recorded. In a comparison of before-and-after the app, three methods for point prevalence surveys of catheter use were tested. Surveys were conducted through manual parsing of the text in the electronic medical records, checkbox surveys, and nurse-notes surveys.
Results:
In all, 475 patients were admitted to the ward, 42(8.8%) installed the app, with 1-5 new users per week. The actions with most ensuing app use were the kick-off with clinical lesson and the recruiting of the intake nurse. Between the survey methods, there was considerable variation in catheter prevalence. Therefore, we used the standard method of manual parsing in further analyses. Catheter use prevalence decreased from 38% to 27% after app introduction.
Conclusions:
Clinical application of Participatient, the infection prevention app for patients, could be feasible when implementation actions are combined. For surveying indwelling urinary catheter use prevalence, manual parsing is best applicable.
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