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S U P P L E M E N T T O O U T P AT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | A U G U S T 2 0 1 4
dence to sup-
port changing.
We asked our-
selves, what are
we missing?
What can we do
better? To start
getting answers,
we conducted a
systematic
review of the lit-
erature. We
looked closely
at every relevant
piece of information we could find about the things
that happen before, during and after surgery — any-
thing that might have an impact on SSIs. And rather
than confine our search to the types of surgery we
were doing, we looked at all the surgical literature
and adapted findings from other areas when we
thought it could help further our goal. Here's some
of what we learned and some of what we now rec-
ommend.
1. Standardize. As surgeons, we needed to
standardize everything we did and make sure we
had both nurses and anesthesiologists on board with
the idea. We have a standard method for closing,
standard sutures and so on. The idea is to eliminate
places where things can fall out of the system. That
P R E V E N T I N G I N F E C T I O N S
Pamela
Bevelhymer,
RN,
BSN
STANDARD PROCEDURE Make sure nurses
and anesthesia providers recognize the
importance of standardizing everything they
do.
