The European Association of Urology Nurses (EAUN) updated the urinary catheter guidelines again in 2024. This case study describes the latest Opencity Inc. engagement to produce a [edited] summary of the full guideline in both a pdf format and a pocket-sized version.
The EAUN guidelines set the standard for comprehensive work, serving as the de facto international guidelines followed by many countries worldwide. Why bother producing a summary of the guidelines? We recognize that only a limited number of health care practitioners will invest the time to properly digest a 149-page guideline document. From similar work on the 2013 EAUN Guidelines, we have seen that the dissemination and usability of the edited summary increase downloads of the full guideline version.
The EAUN recommendations appear throughout the full 2024 guideline document; however, to make it more practical and user-friendly for the reader, the summary presents a table of the 57 recommendations together, listed with the associated supporting references, level and grade of evidence. The process also allowed our edited summary group to double-check them for accuracy. A couple of adjustments were made. We invested time to devise a way to improve the presentation of the intermittent catheterisation procedures. The summary of the EAUN Guidelines contains a foreword by Dr. Susanne Vahr Lauridsen.
“The Guidelines aim to provide evidence-based advice for nurses and other health care professionals performing intermittent catheterisation (IC) and urethral dilatation. It also helps those who teach patients and caregivers how to perform catheterisation. Following these Guidelines can prevent harm to patients and improve adherence to self-catheterisation. Better self-care and independence greatly enhance quality of life (QoL).
For guidelines to be effective, health care professionals, patients, and stakeholders need to know about them. The guidelines should also be easy to understand and use. Nurses can access EAUN Guidelines through the EAUN website and translations by national urology (nurses) societies via their national society. This summary makes the Guidelines even more user-friendly, and the pocket format will make it easy to use in clinical practice. The first EAUN Guidelines summary was popular, as we saw based on downloads and citations, and increased awareness of the EAUN Guidelines outside Europe.” – Dr. Vahr Lauridsen.
Record of Changes
Opencity Inc. was again engaged by Wellspect to work with the team at EAUN on the edited summary. It was a pleasure to again work with committee chair Dr. Vahr Lauridsen, Veronika Geng, Hanneke Lurvink, and Rachael Chapple at Wellspect. While the focus of the work was to produce an accurate summary of the full guideline, editor Lisa Moulton and I also went to pains to ensure that the summary was edited with precision to AMA Manual of Style 11th edition. Consistent with our work on the ORNAC Standards/Guidelines, we incorporated a Record of Changes to help readers see how the 3rd edition of the full EAUN Guidelines has changed since the second edition in 2013.
Updates in Urethral intermittent catheterisation in adults, 2024 relative to the 2013 (second) edition.
- The title of the Guidelines has been adjusted to Urethral intermittent catheterisation in adults including urethral intermittent dilatation.
- Recommendation statements rephrased for clarity with the number of individual recommendations decreased to 57.
- 1. Abbreviations. An extended list of abbreviations has been moved to the beginning of the document for ease of reference.
- 4. Definitions. The list and detail supporting the definitions has been expanded.
- 6. Complications. The section has been updated with clear definitions.
- 7. Catheter material, types of catheters and equipment. Updated the catheter material, included new catheter designs, and removed help devices that were not available anymore.
- A list of catheters was included for illustration purposes only in 7.7.1 Catheters and catheter sets.
- 14. Patient perspective/experience with intermittent catheterisation. The section is new and covers the patient perspective and which barriers and facilitators patients experience when integrating IC in their everyday life.
- Ambiguous text carefully reviewed and rephrased.
- One hundred and twelve new references were added, of which one reference recommended by a reviewer was included. Ninety-six references from the 2013 were retained.
- A new Appendix L. Questionnaires/tools for evaluating intermittent catheterisation/intermittent self-catheterisation has been added.
EAUN Guideline Summary Pocket Version
The production of the pocket version required further detailed consideration. There is a general desire for pdf files to have an even number of pages, a printed booklet must have pages divisible by four for the print process and creation of a stapled booklet. Adaptation for the pagination for readability, page breaks, and structural flow. The booklet version should also have a unique citation separate from that of the pdf version.
- Full original guideline – Vahr Lauridsen S, Chagani S, Daniels A, et al; EAUN Guidelines Working Group. Urethral Intermittent Catheterisation in Adults Including Urethral Intermittent Dilatation: Evidence-based Guidelines for Best Practices in Urological Health Care. 3rd ed. European Association of Urology Nurses; 2024. Accessed March 7, 2025. https://nurses.uroweb.org/guideline/urethral-intermittent-catheterisation-in-adults-including-urethral-intermittent-dilatation/
- Pdf summary version – Vahr Lauridsen S, Geng V, Lurvink H; EAUN Guidelines Working Group. A Summary of the EAUN Guidelines on Urethral Intermittent Catheterisation in Adults: Evidence-based Guidelines for Best Practices in Urological Health Care. European Association of Urology Nurses; 2025. Presented at the 25th International EAUN Meeting, Madrid, March 22, 2025. Accessed www.eaun.org
- Pocket version – Vahr Lauridsen S, Geng V, Lurvink H; EAUN Guidelines Working Group. A Summary of the EAUN Guidelines on Urethral Intermittent Catheterisation in Adults: Evidence-based Guidelines for Best Practices in Urological Health Care. 2nd ed. Pocket version. European Association of Urology Nurses; 2025.
The order of the content in the summary differs from that of the original guidelines to make it even more user-friendly. A list of the twelve appendices in the full guideline document is presented. The full guideline document also includes an extensive presentation of the different products available. Figures were recreated again for readability to ensure they were sharp. This was especially important for the pocket sized version.
Thanks to Wellspect for their unrestricted educational grant to support the costs of the summary, as well as to my Opencity Inc. team, for which Lisa Moulton served as editor, and Max Cornier provided the graphic design.
Images courtesy or EAUN and Wellspect.
