Our Proposal

The National Catheter Education Programme is a Health Education England funded initiative that is working to improve the care of patients with indwelling, urethral and supra-pubic catheters using an educational package. The main aims of the Programme are: • to improve the confidence of the workforce in dealing with catheters across acute, community and emergency service settings • to inform the optimisation of catheter management pathways and processes throughout the NHS • to offer patients, their carers and families support and education on how to manage catheters at home The Programme is built around a multi-professional educational tool which aims to increase knowledge and skills. It uses an approach of working in partnership across diverse service areas to inform best practice and to enable system change in caring for patients with catheters. Started at Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in Chertsey, Surrey the strategic aim for the Programme is to now commence a national roll out. To date the Programme has already resulted in work around pathway improvement, reducing inappropriate antibiotic prescribing, reducing catheter related trauma, and working with paramedics and care homes to reduce conveyance of patients to hospital for simple catheter related problems. The current training product is composed of a series of animated videos; there are 11 separate modules in total. Learners watch the videos and in between each module they participate in a related discussion (the multi-professional and cross-organisational make-up of the audience is what makes this a particularly valuable tool for understanding problems and prompting change).