[Prevention of catheter-related infections: minimizing secondary complications in geriatric patients]

Improving Registered Nurses' Knowledge of Evidence-Based Practice Guidelines to Decrease the Incidence of Central Line-Associated Bloodstream Infections: An Educational Intervention

Background: The 2011 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines provide evidence-based recommendations for preventing central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI). Educating and training health care personnel—incorporating bundled strategies for maximizing patient safety throughout the course of intravenous therapy—is the major area of interest. Despite a low number of reported CLABSIs—below national benchmarks—our large regional medical center has the goal of 0 CLABSI.

Purpose: The purpose of our project was to develop an educational intervention guided by the Healthcare and Technology Synergy Framework to improve registered nurses' (RNs) knowledge of evidence-based practice guidelines to decrease the incidence of CLABSI.

Methodology: A pretest/posttest format was used to evaluate an educational session on the nursing management of central lines (CLs). Participants in the study were RNs employed at a large regional medical center who worked 50% or more per week providing direct patient care in the hospital's intensive care units. An educational session on nursing management of CLs was presented. A 16-question survey (7 demographic and 9 knowledge questions) to assess RNs' knowledge of care and maintenance of CLs was used as the pretest and posttest.

Conclusions: RNs' knowledge of care and maintenance of CLs improved significantly after the intervention (pretest mean score = 4.6 and posttest mean score = 8.4; P = .0001).

Implications for Practice: An educational intervention can increase RNs' knowledge of care of CLs. As a result of this project, an annual evidence-based practice educational intervention was adopted for RNs at our large regional medical center.