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Table 6 ICU Nurse Inductive Results: Dominant Themes and Illustrative Quotations

From: Reducing unnecessary culturing: a systems approach to evaluating urine culture ordering and collection practices among nurses in two acute care settings

Dominant Theme

Illustrative Quotation

(Percent of focus group content pertaining to theme)

Physician Notification of Urinalysis Results (24%)

“If you have a new patient and [the physicians] are questioning what kind of sepsis they were having, then I would be more cognizant of if there was bacteria or white blood cells in the patient’s urine. But otherwise, not really.”

–ICU RN E

Personal Protective Equipment (13%)

“If I were straight cathing a large person I probably would gown up to protect my arms since you are going to be in there. If you are going to be doing something that’s fluidy, I would still wear them because they are outside of the rooms, whether they are ordered or not.”

–ICU RN F (on PPE being a facilitator of proper straight catheterization technique)

Collection Technique/Clean Catch (13%)

“If you are going to get a straight cath [sample] sterilely for a female, at least, you need two nurses, regardless of their size.”

“Right, and then if it’s a bigger person, then it can take five to six potentially.”

–ICU RNs E & C

Patient Body Habitus (12%)

“Trying to get a clean catch on patients who don’t mobilize and can’t stand over a toilet, that is [an environmental barrier] too because we don’t really have bathrooms, we have swing out toilets that are too low for most of our patients anyways.”

–ICU RN F

Foley Catheter (12%)

“If you are super swamped in another room and a nurse helps you by dumping your Foley bag, [they may help you out by saying], ‘hey, did you notice that your urine looks terrible?’”

–ICU RN D