Knowledge and practice of urethral catheterisation by newly qualified medical interns

Urethral catheterisation is a procedure which is daily performed in clinical practice. Though, interns are expected to be proficient in this, the situation is always not so and complications have occurred due to inadequate knowledge of safe urethral catheterisation.

The study is intended to assess the knowledge and the practice of urethral catheterisation of prospective interns with a view of making suggestions for improvement in the teaching of this procedural skill to medical students and interns.

Questionnaires were administered to all prospective interns who had applied to do their compulsory one year internship in the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, Ilorin, Nigeria. The data were analysed using SPSS 11 statistical package.

There were 96 respondents 65 (69.9%) of these were males. They graduated from 6 medical schools in Nigeria and 1 in the Sudan and they were aged between 23 and 36 years. They all had observed urethral catheterisation before while 92.5% have performed urethral catheterisation: 78.5 % under supervision and 14% under no supervision and 7 (7.5%) have not. Only 19.4% had good knowledge of the indications for urethral catheterisation and 53.9% had knowledge of appropriate list of materials for safe urethral catheterisation. Only 29.1% could describe well the steps of safe catheterisation and 31.2%.could list well the possible complications of catheterisation. Less than half had good knowledge of appropriate catheter sizes.

Urethral catheterisation is yet to be well mastered by many newly qualified interns and improvement in the teaching of procedural skills in medical schools may likely improve the situation.