night before surgery, then again on the morning of surgery. When we
see our outpatients in a pre-surgery clinic, we educate them on how
to perform the CHG bath at home. While we're proud of our low
infection rates, we continue to prioritize inpatient baths, as well as
the accurate and consistent documentation of those baths.
Chart the course
To do that, we conducted a study to find out if educating our nurses
and techs on pre-surgical baths impacted compliance with completion
and proper documentation of a CHG bath for inpatients.
Experienced med-surg nurses who transitioned to the operative
environment noted CHG bathing was sometimes less of a focus in
their prior practice. These nurses believed that educating their peers
could increase CHG bathing rates.
To initiate the process, the first thing we did was chart reviews. This
let us measure our compliance for the documentation of the pre-surgi-
cal baths. We also wanted to ensure the nurses understood the impor-
tance of performing and documenting the pre-surgical bath.
Educating your nurses is always key, and in this instance, we were
able to emphasize why we have the patients go through a pre-surgical
bath and how that impacts SSIs. We did that through their staff meet-
ings and a PowerPoint presentation. Also, we conducted a pre-educa-
tion survey and a post-education survey that asked the nurses 6 ques-
tions:
1. Rank the following task in order of priority for you as a caregiver:
medication administration, patient safety, pre-surgical bathing and
linen changes and assessment.
2. How often do you perform pre-surgical CHG baths and linen
changes on pre-surgical patients? (always, sometimes, not often,
never)
Pre-Operative Planner
PP
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