Surgical Site Infection Prevention Paper

Surgical Site Infection Prevention
Lisa M. Ehret
Walden University
NURS 4001, Section 5, Research and Scholarship for Evidence-based Practice
October 19, 2014

Surgical Site Infection Prevention
Surgical site infections (SSI) are infections acquired after a patient undergoes an invasive surgical procedure. A surgical site infection is considered a hospital acquired infection, and in the United States is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality from hospital acquired infections (Korol, Johnston, Waser, Sifakis, Jafri, Lo & Kyaw 2013). These type of infections are highly devastating to a patient and cost the hospital a tremendous amount of money to treat. The purpose of this paper is to highlight how prevention of surgical site infections is necessary to provide excellent patient care, save costs to patient and hospital and how the use of proper technique and evidence based practices can decrease infection rates.
Practice Setting Problem
Patients undergoing invasive surgical procedures are always at risk of
If a patient acquires an SSI, the patient has increased hospital stay time, creating stress on the patient, the patients family, hospital costs, and inevitably creates financial distress between both the patient and the hospital. In 2008, Medicaid and Medicare made a decree stating it would not reimburse the hospital for infections acquired during hospitalization, thus leaving costs for the hospital to cover, and increasing hospital care costs (AORN 2014). Also, with a surgical site infection the patient is at increased risk of having an additional operation, placing stress on the patient thus decreasing health status, also stressing the patient’s family and causing tension between the patient, their family and the hospital organization. Preventing SSI’s would create better patient outcomes, as well as create better patient and hospital