People with catheters face many challenges when it comes to the care they receive. On 27 January, health and social care professionals, voluntary and community sector colleagues, carers and people with catheters came together at Southwark and Lambeth Integrated Care's Catheter Summit.
The Catheter Summit aimed to identify the challenges to delivering high quality catheter care and think of solutions to overcome them.
The ideas developed by the group ranged from improving the care pathway within the community, trialling a 24/7 rapid response service for people's catheter problems, to supporting self-management in the community.
A working group, made up of health and social care professionals and voluntary and community sector colleagues, is now taking this forward by exploring these ideas in more detail to assess what impact they could have on improving catheter care across care settings.
One of the ideas already being taken forward is the Catheter Passport, a patient-owned document that should follow them at discharge and be used to keep a record of catheter changes or issues.
The passport will improve information sharing between care providers and empower the patient to manage their own catheter. The Catheter Passport is currently being tested at Guy's and St Thomas' and King's College Hospital, and will shortly be rolled out to all wards.
Throughout the event people were tweeting using the hashtag #CatheterSummit, to see the social media summary of the event click here.