Surgical Site Infection

The clinical problem that I chose to talk about and will like to present is about surgical site infection. I wanted to address this issue because in the recent year’s, surgical site infections has become a huge problem that is embedded in our common healthcare practices despite the precautionary improvements that were achieved in the healthcare industry. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that “500,000 surgical site infections occur annually and account for 3% of surgical mortality, prolonged lengths of hospital stay, and increased medical cost.” (Diaz, Newman, 2015, P.63). With this being said, nurses have the potential of preventing surgical site infection by following guidelines to meet the patient safety. Identifying

According to Diaz and Newman, the ultimate goal to reducing surgical site infection were to follow specific guidelines that could prevent from happening such as the usage of antibiotics, regulating core temperature, and following the standardized method of hand washing. Health and human services (2014) found that surgical site infection specific occurrence were within outpatient care hospitals and there were some major severe infections associated in ambulatory surgery centers. According to the () surgical site infections following ambulatory surgery procedures, “perioperative nurses and managers in ambulatory surgical settings should be prepared to develop and implement quality improvement initiatives to address SSI prevention after ambulatory surgery.” (Owens, Barrett, Raetzman, Gibbons, Steiner, 2014, P. 590). Establishing early interventions and preparing for any potential risk outcome should be a nursing priority. The Center for Disease Control and National Nosocomial Infection System identified SSI by knowing certain clinical criteria in order to rule out the problem. Nurses working with these patients can use the evidence-based practice by knowing the signs and symptoms of infections such as “a purulent exudates draining from a surgical site, a positive culture obtained from a surgical site that was closed initially, a surgeon’s diagnosis of infection, a surgical site that requires reopening due to at least one of the following signs or symptoms: tenderness, swelling, redness, or heat” (Diaz and Newman, 2015, P. 63). Nurses can be diligent to minimizing the risks associated with surgical site infection if they follow the evidence-based guidelines that were provided to them and practice those measure to their best abilities. According to the article, 75% of postoperative deaths were associated to surgical site infection. It