Abstract:
This study was a cross – sectional, descriptive research aimed to study the prevalence rate and related factors of nosocomial urinary tract infection among the patients with indwelling urinary catheters in Thungsong Hospital, Nakhon Si Thammarat Province. The study population were 300 patients with indwelling urinary catheters in the In – patient Department of Thungsong Hospital, during 1 April – 30 June, 2003. Two urine cultures were done for each patient, firstly, when inserting the urinary catheter and secondly when taking off the catheter or the seven day of catheterization. The instrument used for data collection was the set of questionnaire developed by the researcher whereby its content validity was checked by four experts and the reliability of the instrument was tested, with the Alpha Coefficient value of 0.825. The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics to explain the general characteristics of the samples and inferential statistics, Chi – square, was computed to test the relationship of variables. Results of the study that the prevalence rate of the nosocomial urinary tract infection of the patients with indwelling urinary catheters was 14.7 %, the ward that had the highest prevalence rate was the Special Ward where there were two patients and both of them were infected, followed by the Medical – Surgical (Female) Ward (39.0 %) and ICU (32.0 %) respectively. It was also found that there was positive significant relationship between sex (male), age, underlying disease, experience of having instrument inserted through the urethra, catheterization to assess kidney function, duration of catheterization, changing of the urine bag, size of the catheter used on one hand and nosocomial urinary tract infection among the patients with indwelling urinary catheters, on the other (p< 0.05).
