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Project improves noninvasive IUC alternatives
Editor’s note: The Society of Hospital Medicine’s (SHM’s) Physician in Training Committee launched a scholarship program in 2015 for medical students to help transform health care and revolutionize patient care. The program has been expanded for the 2017-18 year, offering two options for students to receive funding and engage in scholarly work during their first, second and third years of medical school. As a part of the longitudinal (18-month) program, recipients are required to write about their experience on a monthly basis.
It truly has been a rewarding experience participating in a quality improvement project and I am excited to see what the future holds. Our project, “Reducing CAUTI with Noninvasive UC Alternatives and Measure-vention,” aimed to combat catheter associated urinary tract infections, with a three-pronged approach: by reducing UC placement, performing proper maintenance of IUC, and ensuring prompt removal of unnecessary UC.
To date, our project has demonstrated qualitative success. Specifically, we have implemented a pipeline to perform “measure-vention,” or real-time monitoring and correction of defects. The surgical care intensive unit (SICU) was identified as an appropriate candidate for a pilot partnership due to its high utilization of UC. A daily report of patients with UC is generated and then checked against the EMR for UC necessity. Subsequently, we contact the unit RN for details and physicians for removal orders, when possible. Simultaneously, this enables us to reinforce our management bundle in real time. This protocol is being effectively implemented in the SICU and we are hoping to expand to other units as well. Quantitative data collection is still ongoing and hopefully forthcoming.
Previous CAUTI reduction efforts have had variable and partial success. We are very excited to have improved noninvasive IUC alternatives that address staff concerns about incontinence workload, urine output monitoring, and patient comfort. We hope to protect our patients from harm and eventually publicize our experience to help other health care facilities reduce IUC use and CAUTI.
It has been a rewarding experience to participate in a quality improvement project and I am enjoying the challenges of collaborating with a diverse team of medical professionals to improve the patient experience.
Victor Ekuta is a third-year medical student at UC San Diego.
Editor’s note: The Society of Hospital Medicine’s (SHM’s) Physician in Training Committee launched a scholarship program in 2015 for medical students to help transform health care and revolutionize patient care. The program has been expanded for the 2017-18 year, offering two options for students to receive funding and engage in scholarly work during their first, second and third years of medical school. As a part of the longitudinal (18-month) program, recipients are required to write about their experience on a monthly basis.
It truly has been a rewarding experience participating in a quality improvement project and I am excited to see what the future holds. Our project, “Reducing CAUTI with Noninvasive UC Alternatives and Measure-vention,” aimed to combat catheter associated urinary tract infections, with a three-pronged approach: by reducing UC placement, performing proper maintenance of IUC, and ensuring prompt removal of unnecessary UC.
To date, our project has demonstrated qualitative success. Specifically, we have implemented a pipeline to perform “measure-vention,” or real-time monitoring and correction of defects. The surgical care intensive unit (SICU) was identified as an appropriate candidate for a pilot partnership due to its high utilization of UC. A daily report of patients with UC is generated and then checked against the EMR for UC necessity. Subsequently, we contact the unit RN for details and physicians for removal orders, when possible. Simultaneously, this enables us to reinforce our management bundle in real time. This protocol is being effectively implemented in the SICU and we are hoping to expand to other units as well. Quantitative data collection is still ongoing and hopefully forthcoming.
Previous CAUTI reduction efforts have had variable and partial success. We are very excited to have improved noninvasive IUC alternatives that address staff concerns about incontinence workload, urine output monitoring, and patient comfort. We hope to protect our patients from harm and eventually publicize our experience to help other health care facilities reduce IUC use and CAUTI.
It has been a rewarding experience to participate in a quality improvement project and I am enjoying the challenges of collaborating with a diverse team of medical professionals to improve the patient experience.
Victor Ekuta is a third-year medical student at UC San Diego.
Editor’s note: The Society of Hospital Medicine’s (SHM’s) Physician in Training Committee launched a scholarship program in 2015 for medical students to help transform health care and revolutionize patient care. The program has been expanded for the 2017-18 year, offering two options for students to receive funding and engage in scholarly work during their first, second and third years of medical school. As a part of the longitudinal (18-month) program, recipients are required to write about their experience on a monthly basis.
It truly has been a rewarding experience participating in a quality improvement project and I am excited to see what the future holds. Our project, “Reducing CAUTI with Noninvasive UC Alternatives and Measure-vention,” aimed to combat catheter associated urinary tract infections, with a three-pronged approach: by reducing UC placement, performing proper maintenance of IUC, and ensuring prompt removal of unnecessary UC.
To date, our project has demonstrated qualitative success. Specifically, we have implemented a pipeline to perform “measure-vention,” or real-time monitoring and correction of defects. The surgical care intensive unit (SICU) was identified as an appropriate candidate for a pilot partnership due to its high utilization of UC. A daily report of patients with UC is generated and then checked against the EMR for UC necessity. Subsequently, we contact the unit RN for details and physicians for removal orders, when possible. Simultaneously, this enables us to reinforce our management bundle in real time. This protocol is being effectively implemented in the SICU and we are hoping to expand to other units as well. Quantitative data collection is still ongoing and hopefully forthcoming.
Previous CAUTI reduction efforts have had variable and partial success. We are very excited to have improved noninvasive IUC alternatives that address staff concerns about incontinence workload, urine output monitoring, and patient comfort. We hope to protect our patients from harm and eventually publicize our experience to help other health care facilities reduce IUC use and CAUTI.
It has been a rewarding experience to participate in a quality improvement project and I am enjoying the challenges of collaborating with a diverse team of medical professionals to improve the patient experience.
Victor Ekuta is a third-year medical student at UC San Diego.
Ensuring a smooth data collection process
Editor’s note: The Society of Hospital Medicine’s (SHM’s) Physician in Training Committee launched a scholarship program in 2015 for medical students to help transform health care and revolutionize patient care. The program has been expanded for the 2017-18 year, offering two options for students to receive funding and engage in scholarly work during their first, second and third years of medical school. As a part of the longitudinal (18-month) program, recipients are required to write about their experience on a monthly basis.
Piloting of data collection is finally underway! My mentor, Dr. Ian Jenkins, an attending in the Division of Hospital Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, and I are currently collaborating with the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at UC San Diego to conduct a daily review of urinary catheter (UC) necessity for patients on the unit, and subsequently coordinating with nursing staff on the unit to look for opportunities to implement UC alternatives.
As far as timeline, we are past the halfway point. One thing that has surprised me is how long it has taken to get piloting phase underway. To that end, I think that our initial project timeline was ambitious, especially because we were unclear on how well initial project enthusiasm would translate into subsequent project participation. Up until this point, our research approach has largely been to fine tune each process prospectively. For instance, we decided a pilot run of data collection prior to final project data collection would allow us to ensure a smoother data collection process. While this has slowed things initially, we are optimistic that this will allow us to progress more quickly and smoothly in the latter stages of the project. We are not currently planning to change this research approach for the time being, but we are open to the idea depending on how well the data piloting phase progresses.
Outside of data collection, the project has provided an excellent opportunity to learn and improve clinical skills. Specifically, the project has improved my understanding of the indications for urinary catheter use, as well as helped me to develop a more critical mindset regarding medical indications in general. The project has made me more aware of the importance of really asking and thinking about why a patient is on a specific medication or using a specific medical device, which is something that is very helpful for anticipating and avoiding errors in the clinical setting.
Overall, I have enjoyed my participation in the project to date and it has increased my enthusiasm for participating in a quality improvement project.
Victor Ekuta is a third-year medical student at UC San Diego.
Editor’s note: The Society of Hospital Medicine’s (SHM’s) Physician in Training Committee launched a scholarship program in 2015 for medical students to help transform health care and revolutionize patient care. The program has been expanded for the 2017-18 year, offering two options for students to receive funding and engage in scholarly work during their first, second and third years of medical school. As a part of the longitudinal (18-month) program, recipients are required to write about their experience on a monthly basis.
Piloting of data collection is finally underway! My mentor, Dr. Ian Jenkins, an attending in the Division of Hospital Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, and I are currently collaborating with the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at UC San Diego to conduct a daily review of urinary catheter (UC) necessity for patients on the unit, and subsequently coordinating with nursing staff on the unit to look for opportunities to implement UC alternatives.
As far as timeline, we are past the halfway point. One thing that has surprised me is how long it has taken to get piloting phase underway. To that end, I think that our initial project timeline was ambitious, especially because we were unclear on how well initial project enthusiasm would translate into subsequent project participation. Up until this point, our research approach has largely been to fine tune each process prospectively. For instance, we decided a pilot run of data collection prior to final project data collection would allow us to ensure a smoother data collection process. While this has slowed things initially, we are optimistic that this will allow us to progress more quickly and smoothly in the latter stages of the project. We are not currently planning to change this research approach for the time being, but we are open to the idea depending on how well the data piloting phase progresses.
Outside of data collection, the project has provided an excellent opportunity to learn and improve clinical skills. Specifically, the project has improved my understanding of the indications for urinary catheter use, as well as helped me to develop a more critical mindset regarding medical indications in general. The project has made me more aware of the importance of really asking and thinking about why a patient is on a specific medication or using a specific medical device, which is something that is very helpful for anticipating and avoiding errors in the clinical setting.
Overall, I have enjoyed my participation in the project to date and it has increased my enthusiasm for participating in a quality improvement project.
Victor Ekuta is a third-year medical student at UC San Diego.
Editor’s note: The Society of Hospital Medicine’s (SHM’s) Physician in Training Committee launched a scholarship program in 2015 for medical students to help transform health care and revolutionize patient care. The program has been expanded for the 2017-18 year, offering two options for students to receive funding and engage in scholarly work during their first, second and third years of medical school. As a part of the longitudinal (18-month) program, recipients are required to write about their experience on a monthly basis.
Piloting of data collection is finally underway! My mentor, Dr. Ian Jenkins, an attending in the Division of Hospital Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, and I are currently collaborating with the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at UC San Diego to conduct a daily review of urinary catheter (UC) necessity for patients on the unit, and subsequently coordinating with nursing staff on the unit to look for opportunities to implement UC alternatives.
As far as timeline, we are past the halfway point. One thing that has surprised me is how long it has taken to get piloting phase underway. To that end, I think that our initial project timeline was ambitious, especially because we were unclear on how well initial project enthusiasm would translate into subsequent project participation. Up until this point, our research approach has largely been to fine tune each process prospectively. For instance, we decided a pilot run of data collection prior to final project data collection would allow us to ensure a smoother data collection process. While this has slowed things initially, we are optimistic that this will allow us to progress more quickly and smoothly in the latter stages of the project. We are not currently planning to change this research approach for the time being, but we are open to the idea depending on how well the data piloting phase progresses.
Outside of data collection, the project has provided an excellent opportunity to learn and improve clinical skills. Specifically, the project has improved my understanding of the indications for urinary catheter use, as well as helped me to develop a more critical mindset regarding medical indications in general. The project has made me more aware of the importance of really asking and thinking about why a patient is on a specific medication or using a specific medical device, which is something that is very helpful for anticipating and avoiding errors in the clinical setting.
Overall, I have enjoyed my participation in the project to date and it has increased my enthusiasm for participating in a quality improvement project.
Victor Ekuta is a third-year medical student at UC San Diego.
Coordinating data collection in a QI project
Editor’s note: The Society of Hospital Medicine’s (SHM’s) Physician in Training Committee launched a scholarship program in 2015 for medical students to help transform health care and revolutionize patient care. The program has been expanded for the 2017-18 year, offering two options for students to receive funding and engage in scholarly work during their first, second and third years of medical school. As a part of the longitudinal (18-month) program, recipients are required to write about their experience on a monthly basis.
I am currently working with my mentor, Dr. Ian Jenkins, an attending in the Division of Hospital Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, to start piloting data collection on our project to cut catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI). We have contacted a number of potential units to recruit for CAUTI prevention efforts, but we are hoping to do a preliminary trial of data collection to better estimate the amount of time it takes to gather data for an individual unit.
I am quickly learning that conducting a successful quality improvement project requires one to be forward-looking in an attempt to identify challenges before they arise. With respect to coordinating data collection, it may have been helpful for us to initially meet with hospital staff to identify the best staff for coordinating data collection efforts (i.e. physician, nurse, trainee) within each individual unit. This could potentially have helped us to also better communicate and recruit individuals to partner with us for our project.
I am continuing to enjoy the challenges of performing a quality improvement project. One skill that I have developed is learning how to be forward-thinking in my approach to research in an attempt to handle challenges prospectively, as opposed to retrospectively. This has helped me improve everything from how I think about data collection to how I think about displaying results. I am truly grateful to my mentor Dr. Jenkins for his help in this regard.
Victor Ekuta is a third-year medical student at UC San Diego.
Editor’s note: The Society of Hospital Medicine’s (SHM’s) Physician in Training Committee launched a scholarship program in 2015 for medical students to help transform health care and revolutionize patient care. The program has been expanded for the 2017-18 year, offering two options for students to receive funding and engage in scholarly work during their first, second and third years of medical school. As a part of the longitudinal (18-month) program, recipients are required to write about their experience on a monthly basis.
I am currently working with my mentor, Dr. Ian Jenkins, an attending in the Division of Hospital Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, to start piloting data collection on our project to cut catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI). We have contacted a number of potential units to recruit for CAUTI prevention efforts, but we are hoping to do a preliminary trial of data collection to better estimate the amount of time it takes to gather data for an individual unit.
I am quickly learning that conducting a successful quality improvement project requires one to be forward-looking in an attempt to identify challenges before they arise. With respect to coordinating data collection, it may have been helpful for us to initially meet with hospital staff to identify the best staff for coordinating data collection efforts (i.e. physician, nurse, trainee) within each individual unit. This could potentially have helped us to also better communicate and recruit individuals to partner with us for our project.
I am continuing to enjoy the challenges of performing a quality improvement project. One skill that I have developed is learning how to be forward-thinking in my approach to research in an attempt to handle challenges prospectively, as opposed to retrospectively. This has helped me improve everything from how I think about data collection to how I think about displaying results. I am truly grateful to my mentor Dr. Jenkins for his help in this regard.
Victor Ekuta is a third-year medical student at UC San Diego.
Editor’s note: The Society of Hospital Medicine’s (SHM’s) Physician in Training Committee launched a scholarship program in 2015 for medical students to help transform health care and revolutionize patient care. The program has been expanded for the 2017-18 year, offering two options for students to receive funding and engage in scholarly work during their first, second and third years of medical school. As a part of the longitudinal (18-month) program, recipients are required to write about their experience on a monthly basis.
I am currently working with my mentor, Dr. Ian Jenkins, an attending in the Division of Hospital Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, to start piloting data collection on our project to cut catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI). We have contacted a number of potential units to recruit for CAUTI prevention efforts, but we are hoping to do a preliminary trial of data collection to better estimate the amount of time it takes to gather data for an individual unit.
I am quickly learning that conducting a successful quality improvement project requires one to be forward-looking in an attempt to identify challenges before they arise. With respect to coordinating data collection, it may have been helpful for us to initially meet with hospital staff to identify the best staff for coordinating data collection efforts (i.e. physician, nurse, trainee) within each individual unit. This could potentially have helped us to also better communicate and recruit individuals to partner with us for our project.
I am continuing to enjoy the challenges of performing a quality improvement project. One skill that I have developed is learning how to be forward-thinking in my approach to research in an attempt to handle challenges prospectively, as opposed to retrospectively. This has helped me improve everything from how I think about data collection to how I think about displaying results. I am truly grateful to my mentor Dr. Jenkins for his help in this regard.
Victor Ekuta is a third-year medical student at UC San Diego.
Upfront preparation key to QI projects
Editor’s note: The Society of Hospital Medicine’s (SHM’s) Physician in Training Committee launched a scholarship program in 2015 for medical students to help transform healthcare and revolutionize patient care. The program has been expanded for the 2017-2018 year, offering two options for students to receive funding and engage in scholarly work during their first, second, and third years of medical school. As a part of the longitudinal (18-month) program, recipients are required to write about their experience on a monthly basis.
I am currently working with my mentor, Ian Jenkins, MD, an attending in the Division of Hospital Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, to begin preliminary data collection for our project to cut catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI). The project time line is on track, and we hope to have things up and running in the next month.
Up to this point, we have been working to identify the most relevant data to collect to best explore our outcome variable. A key goal for our project is to show that increased education measures can ultimately lead to reductions in patient harm. Rather than directly measuring harm reduction, we have settled on tracking the closely identified process measure of the number of inappropriate Foley catheters removed. This measure is potentially more accessible for health care providers than measuring CAUTI rates would be because individual CAUTI events are rare.
In addition to starting data collection, I am quickly learning that conducting a quality improvement project requires a large amount of upfront preparation. Namely, it requires not only identifying the outcome measures you would like to track but also prospectively strategizing about how to track this measure to facilitate future data presentation and publication. Dr. Jenkins has been instrumental as a resource for bouncing off various ideas regarding how to streamline data collection and presentation. He has also been valuable in helping me to identify appropriate units for data collection and teaching me to be forward thinking regarding the best way to collect data for my project. This has truly saved me a significant amount of time and increased the project’s efficiency.
Outside of data collection, we have continued to engage as many stakeholders as we can to ensure the success of the project. Because our project was deemed high priority because of the high CAUTI rates at UCSD, we engaged higher-level hospital administrators who could be onboard with the project, as well as provide their own input to improve project’s effects. Separately, we have continued to collaborate directly with nursing and physician staff to not only share our ongoing project with them but also directly engage them in the project so we can better ensure that the project is not only theoretically palatable but will be realistically implemented as well.
A quality improvement project certainly presents its own unique set of challenges, but I am truly enjoying collaborating and troubleshooting in hopes of ultimately improving patient care.
Victor Ekuta is a third-year medical student at UC San Diego.
Editor’s note: The Society of Hospital Medicine’s (SHM’s) Physician in Training Committee launched a scholarship program in 2015 for medical students to help transform healthcare and revolutionize patient care. The program has been expanded for the 2017-2018 year, offering two options for students to receive funding and engage in scholarly work during their first, second, and third years of medical school. As a part of the longitudinal (18-month) program, recipients are required to write about their experience on a monthly basis.
I am currently working with my mentor, Ian Jenkins, MD, an attending in the Division of Hospital Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, to begin preliminary data collection for our project to cut catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI). The project time line is on track, and we hope to have things up and running in the next month.
Up to this point, we have been working to identify the most relevant data to collect to best explore our outcome variable. A key goal for our project is to show that increased education measures can ultimately lead to reductions in patient harm. Rather than directly measuring harm reduction, we have settled on tracking the closely identified process measure of the number of inappropriate Foley catheters removed. This measure is potentially more accessible for health care providers than measuring CAUTI rates would be because individual CAUTI events are rare.
In addition to starting data collection, I am quickly learning that conducting a quality improvement project requires a large amount of upfront preparation. Namely, it requires not only identifying the outcome measures you would like to track but also prospectively strategizing about how to track this measure to facilitate future data presentation and publication. Dr. Jenkins has been instrumental as a resource for bouncing off various ideas regarding how to streamline data collection and presentation. He has also been valuable in helping me to identify appropriate units for data collection and teaching me to be forward thinking regarding the best way to collect data for my project. This has truly saved me a significant amount of time and increased the project’s efficiency.
Outside of data collection, we have continued to engage as many stakeholders as we can to ensure the success of the project. Because our project was deemed high priority because of the high CAUTI rates at UCSD, we engaged higher-level hospital administrators who could be onboard with the project, as well as provide their own input to improve project’s effects. Separately, we have continued to collaborate directly with nursing and physician staff to not only share our ongoing project with them but also directly engage them in the project so we can better ensure that the project is not only theoretically palatable but will be realistically implemented as well.
A quality improvement project certainly presents its own unique set of challenges, but I am truly enjoying collaborating and troubleshooting in hopes of ultimately improving patient care.
Victor Ekuta is a third-year medical student at UC San Diego.
Editor’s note: The Society of Hospital Medicine’s (SHM’s) Physician in Training Committee launched a scholarship program in 2015 for medical students to help transform healthcare and revolutionize patient care. The program has been expanded for the 2017-2018 year, offering two options for students to receive funding and engage in scholarly work during their first, second, and third years of medical school. As a part of the longitudinal (18-month) program, recipients are required to write about their experience on a monthly basis.
I am currently working with my mentor, Ian Jenkins, MD, an attending in the Division of Hospital Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, to begin preliminary data collection for our project to cut catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI). The project time line is on track, and we hope to have things up and running in the next month.
Up to this point, we have been working to identify the most relevant data to collect to best explore our outcome variable. A key goal for our project is to show that increased education measures can ultimately lead to reductions in patient harm. Rather than directly measuring harm reduction, we have settled on tracking the closely identified process measure of the number of inappropriate Foley catheters removed. This measure is potentially more accessible for health care providers than measuring CAUTI rates would be because individual CAUTI events are rare.
In addition to starting data collection, I am quickly learning that conducting a quality improvement project requires a large amount of upfront preparation. Namely, it requires not only identifying the outcome measures you would like to track but also prospectively strategizing about how to track this measure to facilitate future data presentation and publication. Dr. Jenkins has been instrumental as a resource for bouncing off various ideas regarding how to streamline data collection and presentation. He has also been valuable in helping me to identify appropriate units for data collection and teaching me to be forward thinking regarding the best way to collect data for my project. This has truly saved me a significant amount of time and increased the project’s efficiency.
Outside of data collection, we have continued to engage as many stakeholders as we can to ensure the success of the project. Because our project was deemed high priority because of the high CAUTI rates at UCSD, we engaged higher-level hospital administrators who could be onboard with the project, as well as provide their own input to improve project’s effects. Separately, we have continued to collaborate directly with nursing and physician staff to not only share our ongoing project with them but also directly engage them in the project so we can better ensure that the project is not only theoretically palatable but will be realistically implemented as well.
A quality improvement project certainly presents its own unique set of challenges, but I am truly enjoying collaborating and troubleshooting in hopes of ultimately improving patient care.
Victor Ekuta is a third-year medical student at UC San Diego.
Bridging clinical medicine, research, and quality
Editor’s note: The Society of Hospital Medicine’s (SHM’s) Physician in Training Committee launched a scholarship program in 2015 for medical students to help transform health care and revolutionize patient care. The program has been expanded for the 2017-2018 year, offering two options for students to receive funding and engage in scholarly work during their first, second, and third years of medical school. As a part of the longitudinal (18-month) program, recipients are required to write about their experiences on a monthly basis.
I am a third-year medical student at the University of California, San Diego, as well as a recipient of the SHM Longitudinal Scholar Grant. Ultimately, I intend to pursue a career in academic medicine as a clinician-scientist, where I hope to bridge my interests in neuroscience, research, and clinical medicine.
Prior to entering medical school, I participated in a wide array of basic science, translational, and clinical research projects, but none in the area of quality improvement (QI). Given the breadth of my previous research experiences, an attractive feature of the SHM Hospitalist grant was the opportunity to complement this breadth of research exposure with increasing depth by exploring a QI project.
This year, I’ll be getting my first exposure to a QI project under the fine mentorship of Ian Jenkins, MD, SFHM, an attending in the division of hospital medicine at UCSD, who is working on an ongoing effort to combat catheter–associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI). Methods for reducing CAUTI include reducing indwelling urinary catheter (IUC) placement, performing proper maintenance of IUCs, and ensuring prompt removal of unnecessary urinary catheters.
Our project aims to combine all three approaches, along with staff education on IUC management and IUC alternatives. We plan to perform a “measure-vention,” or real-time monitoring and correction of defects by examining the rate of CAUTI as well as the percentage IUC utilization rate in participating units. Ultimately, we hope to optimize patient comfort and publicize our experience to help other health care facilities reduce IUC use and CAUTI.
I am excited to see how basic interventions, such as education and measure-vention can drive the development of improved health outcomes and quality patient care.
Victor Ekuta is a third-year medical student at the University of California, San Diego.
Editor’s note: The Society of Hospital Medicine’s (SHM’s) Physician in Training Committee launched a scholarship program in 2015 for medical students to help transform health care and revolutionize patient care. The program has been expanded for the 2017-2018 year, offering two options for students to receive funding and engage in scholarly work during their first, second, and third years of medical school. As a part of the longitudinal (18-month) program, recipients are required to write about their experiences on a monthly basis.
I am a third-year medical student at the University of California, San Diego, as well as a recipient of the SHM Longitudinal Scholar Grant. Ultimately, I intend to pursue a career in academic medicine as a clinician-scientist, where I hope to bridge my interests in neuroscience, research, and clinical medicine.
Prior to entering medical school, I participated in a wide array of basic science, translational, and clinical research projects, but none in the area of quality improvement (QI). Given the breadth of my previous research experiences, an attractive feature of the SHM Hospitalist grant was the opportunity to complement this breadth of research exposure with increasing depth by exploring a QI project.
This year, I’ll be getting my first exposure to a QI project under the fine mentorship of Ian Jenkins, MD, SFHM, an attending in the division of hospital medicine at UCSD, who is working on an ongoing effort to combat catheter–associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI). Methods for reducing CAUTI include reducing indwelling urinary catheter (IUC) placement, performing proper maintenance of IUCs, and ensuring prompt removal of unnecessary urinary catheters.
Our project aims to combine all three approaches, along with staff education on IUC management and IUC alternatives. We plan to perform a “measure-vention,” or real-time monitoring and correction of defects by examining the rate of CAUTI as well as the percentage IUC utilization rate in participating units. Ultimately, we hope to optimize patient comfort and publicize our experience to help other health care facilities reduce IUC use and CAUTI.
I am excited to see how basic interventions, such as education and measure-vention can drive the development of improved health outcomes and quality patient care.
Victor Ekuta is a third-year medical student at the University of California, San Diego.
Editor’s note: The Society of Hospital Medicine’s (SHM’s) Physician in Training Committee launched a scholarship program in 2015 for medical students to help transform health care and revolutionize patient care. The program has been expanded for the 2017-2018 year, offering two options for students to receive funding and engage in scholarly work during their first, second, and third years of medical school. As a part of the longitudinal (18-month) program, recipients are required to write about their experiences on a monthly basis.
I am a third-year medical student at the University of California, San Diego, as well as a recipient of the SHM Longitudinal Scholar Grant. Ultimately, I intend to pursue a career in academic medicine as a clinician-scientist, where I hope to bridge my interests in neuroscience, research, and clinical medicine.
Prior to entering medical school, I participated in a wide array of basic science, translational, and clinical research projects, but none in the area of quality improvement (QI). Given the breadth of my previous research experiences, an attractive feature of the SHM Hospitalist grant was the opportunity to complement this breadth of research exposure with increasing depth by exploring a QI project.
This year, I’ll be getting my first exposure to a QI project under the fine mentorship of Ian Jenkins, MD, SFHM, an attending in the division of hospital medicine at UCSD, who is working on an ongoing effort to combat catheter–associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI). Methods for reducing CAUTI include reducing indwelling urinary catheter (IUC) placement, performing proper maintenance of IUCs, and ensuring prompt removal of unnecessary urinary catheters.
Our project aims to combine all three approaches, along with staff education on IUC management and IUC alternatives. We plan to perform a “measure-vention,” or real-time monitoring and correction of defects by examining the rate of CAUTI as well as the percentage IUC utilization rate in participating units. Ultimately, we hope to optimize patient comfort and publicize our experience to help other health care facilities reduce IUC use and CAUTI.
I am excited to see how basic interventions, such as education and measure-vention can drive the development of improved health outcomes and quality patient care.
Victor Ekuta is a third-year medical student at the University of California, San Diego.