Self-Care Activities of Community-Residing Adults With Indwelling Urinary Catheters: A Scoping Review.
Connie Schumacher, Melissa Northwood, Rachael Nalunga and 2 others
PMID 40296650WHAT IT FOUND
Community adults with long-term indwelling urinary catheters do most daily catheter care themselves, but little patient-facing guidance covers what to do when complications arise.
Nurses should teach monitoring and when to call for help.
Key findings
01Community-residing adults with long-term indwelling urinary catheters assume daily catheter care and must detect problems themselves, while nurse visits are mainly scheduled for catheter changes.
02The mapped self-care activities covered maintenance, monitoring and management, but only 11 of 23 documents reporting more than one category included all three, and patient-facing management information was limited.
03The most common complication topics were catheter-associated urinary tract infection (26 documents) and catheter malfunction (22 documents).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Only documents written in English were included, so relevant non-English guidance or studies may be missing. Conference abstracts, letters to the editor and web pages were excluded, so newer quality improvement work may be absent. The review included 32 documents rather than patients, and no documents were removed after quality appraisal; eight were expert opinion and five were guidelines, so it maps written advice rather than tested care. Much of the literature was aimed at health-care providers rather than patients, and the review found little patient-facing detail on what to do when abnormal findings occur. The included documents varied widely in design, country and self-care activities, so the review does not show which activities prevent complications or emergency visits.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this scoping review as proof that catheter self-care education prevents complications or emergency visits. It mapped reported activities and found that patient-facing management information was limited, with no synthesis of effectiveness.