We've been touring the wards this week raising awareness and understanding of the use of urine dipsticks.

The infection control and antimicrobial teams are running a campaign called to Dip or Not to Dip. This is in line with recent CQUIN* work surrounding UTI diagnosis and treatment in the trust. They identified that there was a lack of knowledge and understanding around urine dipsticks and have been providing education for the last couple of months and the response is encouraging, though there is some way to go.

The interactive to dip or not to dip trolley will be another way of helping us spreading the message.

Here we explain why it's not always necessary to to a dip test on older patients and what you should do:

• Older patients OFTEN have bacteria in their urine without having a UTI… this is “asymptomatic bacteriuria” and it doesn't require antibiotics
• Urine dipsticks cannot differentiate between UTI & asymptomatic bacteriuria
• Be a urosceptic! Only diagnose UTI on clinical signs & symptoms
• Do not use a urine dipstick in >65s, treat as per guidelines and send a urine sample to the lab for culture

* CQUIN stands for Commissioning for Quality and Innovation. A proportion of our income is conditional on demonstrating improvements in quality and innovation in specified areas of care.