Good Morning Sarah,
I'm just going to toss out my initial feelings/reaction on this idea. For me as a patient, I would not want to be straight cathed in a medical setting by an MA. I would want to be attended too by someone with more educational and systems experience.
As an ambulatory nurse, and have worked in ambulatory all my career, I would not want to delegate that to an MA. Don't get me wrong, there are amazing MA's out there with lots of experience and skill, and I also do not feel like it is a responsibility that should be delegated to that level of credentialing.
At my teaching hospital, we do not delegate that inpatient or in ambulatory. It is an RN level responsibility.
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Rachel Tomlinson BSN RN
Doernbecher Children's Hospital
Eugene OR
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Original Message:
Sent: 08-10-2023 14:48
From: Sarah Kundrat
Subject: MAs Performing Straight-Catheterization in Clinic
Good afternoon,
We recently onboarded a new busy UroGyn practice that prefers to straight-cath all patients vs. clean catch because of the higher rate of contamination and need to have patients come back to repeat the test. We are not staffed with enough RNs to maintain this practice since 80% of their patients require straight-cath during rooming. Plus, these providers spend a lot of time in the OR and rely on their nurses to write pre-op orders per protocol and work very independently via protocols for the day-to-day patient needs.
Does anyone allow MAs to perform straight-cath? I know it's not part of their current curriculum but we do have an MA educator that could provide didactic and hands on training with a competency validation requirement performing minimally 3 procedures. I should say that I live in Illinois with a very "gray" Medical Practice Act governing MA scope of practice.
This would definitely not be my first choice but want to explore all options before I go back to this group to let them know they may need to change practice or find some compromise.
Very interested in others insights and experiences!
Thanks,
Sarah
Sarah L. Kundrat MSN, RN, NEA-BC
Executive Director, Ambulatory Nursing
Associate Chief Ambulatory Nursing Officer
UChicago Medicine
5841 S. Maryland Avenue | Mitchell TN202-C | Chicago, IL | 60637
Office: 773.702.3917 | Pager: 773.228.4844 (9329) | cell: 815.354.0221
sarah.kundrat@uchospitals.edu
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