I just couldn't resist. This is really just a story about how nurses need to remember where they put their trouser snakes, but it's such a fascinating topic and is kind of gadgety if you consider rubber tubing a gadget.
See, a lot of infections occur when patients sit around too long with a mainline in their mainline.
"Doctors are responsible for ordering the removal of catheters, but research has shown that many of them forget which patients have catheters and how long they have them," says lead author Sanjay Saint, M.D., M.P.H., a hospitalist at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System and an associate professor of internal medicine at the U-M Medical School. "Our reminder system helps doctors do the right thing," he adds.
I mean wouldn't you remember? Wouldn't you notice a bag of urine lying around? I mean my wife reminds me about mine almost every day and I don't even wear a catheter! Extra points: look at the name of that catheter in the image... the Xpresso. Mmmm... frothy. Ray says that's a picture of a pee-pee catheter. It has a balloon. For comfort.
Hey doc, do I still need this catheter? [EurekaAlert]