YNHHS faced a multifaceted challenge: transitioning away from a latex-based external catheter to improve patient safety, while ensuring that leadership and frontline staff were all on board with the change.
Beyond the allergy concerns, nurses had said they had no problems with the female external catheter they were using. However, they were using their female external catheter off-label on male patients and inappropriately on ambulatory patients. Both misuses posed clinical risks and inefficiencies.
Planning for the transition to a new external catheter also required that staff feel confident and supported before, during and after the conversion.“ It was important that they felt comfortable that they had the product when they needed it, they knew how to use it and they knew who to contact if they had trouble,” says Nancy M. Peterson, MSN, BA, RN, resource and
“ It was important that they felt comfortable that they had the product when they needed it, they knew how to use it and they knew who to contact if they had trouble.”
— Nancy Peterson, MSN, BA, RN, Resource and Education Coordinator, Center for Nursing Excellence,
Yale New Haven Health education coordinator, Center for Nursing Excellence, Yale New Haven Health.
ACTION Benchmarking and education lead to collaborative implementation To avoid another rushed conversion, the first step was benchmarking. They wanted to understand usage patterns, pain points and staff sentiment regarding the existing product. The benchmarking would provide data they could share with hospital nursing leadership. They received 134 surveys back, and what they found was surprising. 2
“ The benchmarking made it tangible,” Katz says.“ I pulled it up on a slide and said,‘ Here’ s what our staff are telling us. You can’ t refute this.’” The benchmarking was key to have that evidence.“ To show them,‘ You say you love this product, but you really don’ t love this product,’” Katz says. It allowed the YNHHS team to start exploring a change.
Evaluating Versette and gathering feedback A system-wide evaluation of the patented Versette followed, involving five locations and multiple units per hospital for a total of 15 units.“ It was a huge undertaking,” comments Lori Matarazzo-Joy RN, BSN, CIC, infection preventionist at YNHHS.
“ Once we narrowed down the trial units, we connected with the nursing leaders and their education teams at each of the facilities,” explains Jennifer Beigie, a urology clinical solutions manager at Medline.
The Medline team and YNHHS’ clinicians, plus the health system’ s nurse educators, worked closely together to come up with a simple list of survey questions. The goal was to capture honest, informed feedback from the busy staff.
To give staff time to adjust to the new product during the trial, they waited a week to ask for feedback. During the second week, Matarazzo-Joy and others started collecting feedback, providing a QR code to send responses to a database, making outcomes easy to measure.
The evaluation lasted approximately three weeks and, at the end, all the remaining Versette trial products were withdrawn from use.
OUTCOME A model for clinical transformation The Versette evaluation yielded 189 completed surveys with a 93 % acceptance rate, far exceeding the initial goal of 100 surveys and 70 % acceptance rate. 2“ When we quickly got to 100 completed surveys, we knew we could blow that out of the water, so we kept going for more,” says Medline urology sales rep Sammia Strazdon, a project lead.
10 Healthy Skin Issue 16 / Fall 2025