Reducing Inappropriate Urinary Catheter Use by Involving Patients Through the Participatient App: Before-and-After Study

Background The risk of urinary tract infections is increased by the inappropriate placement and unnecessary prolongation of the use of indwelling urinary catheters. Sustained behavior change in infection prevention could be promoted by empowering patients through a smartphone app. Objective The aim of this study is to assess the feasibility and efficacy of implementation actions on patients’ use of the Participatient app on a clinical ward and to compare 3 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. Over a period of 3 months, the number of new app users, days of use, and sessions were recorded. In a comparison of urinary catheter use before and after the implementation of the app, 3 methods for point prevalence surveys of catheter use were tested. Surveys were conducted through manual parsing of the text in patients’ electronic medical records, parsing a survey of checkbox items, and parsing nursing notes. Results In all, 475 patients were admitted to the ward, 42 (8.8%) installed the app, with 1 to 5 new users per week. The actions with the most ensuing app use were the kick-off with the clinical lesson and recruiting of the intake nurse. Between the survey methods, there was considerable variation in catheter use prevalence. Therefore, we used the standard method of manual parsing in further analyses. Catheter use prevalence decreased from 38% (36/96) to 27% (23/86) after app introduction (OR 0.61, 95% CI 0.32-1.14). Conclusions The clinical application of Participatient, the infection prevention app for patients, could be feasible when implementation actions are also used. For surveying indwelling urinary catheter use prevalence, manual parsing is the best approach.