Wound infection audit tool

This tool will help your safety program team understand lapses in infection prevention processes that may have contributed to the surgical site infection case. It can help your team identify practice patterns and inconsistencies in practice, so you can more easily pinpoint opportunities for intervention.

A team of clinicians designed this tool to assess practice variability in its perioperative area. Your team may want to investigate care processes that are not included in this tool, or assess different levels for normothermia or glucose control. Also, this tool may include processes your team does not use. Your team should investigate as many site infections as possible, but there is no right number to review.

If you already have a site infection review process, you can embed this tool into your existing process. Only you know the approach that will work best in your perioperative area. Even if some team members are not part of the data collection process, the entire improvement team is responsible for creating a cohesive plan to address performance gaps. If the investigation reveals variability in surgical care, your safety program team can use additional audit tools to dig deeper into the care delivery system.

Once defects have been clearly identified, you can design a quality improvement intervention to address them. You should also share investigation results monthly or quarterly with your frontline staff and operating room leadership if they are not already part of your CUSP team to raise awareness of ongoing quality issues.

You can use the materials in the AHRQ Toolkit to Promote Safe Surgery, such as the Surgical Complication Prevention guide, to guide your team through the quality improvement intervention design process. Did you find practice variability? Dig deeper with the Normothermia Audit Tool Word, 1. Prophylactic Antibiotics: Did the patient receive appropriate antibiotic selection, dosing, timing, and redosing?

Dig deeper with the Antibiotic Audit Tool Word, 1. It did not identify clinical trial evidence to support a lower target, but noted that some other organizations have made recommendations based on observational evidence.

The assessment tool is intended for health department use whereas the checklist is intended primarily for healthcare facility use. Skip directly to site content Skip directly to page options Skip directly to A-Z link. Section Navigation.

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Syndicate. Infection Control Assessment Tools. Minus Related Pages. To receive email updates about this page, enter your email address: Email Address. What's this? Use to: Establish a baseline Collect observations over several days or week. Maintain performance Periodically ensure continued vigilance and detect problems. Performance improvement In the event performance falls below expectations.

Individual Tools. Tool Suites. Ambulatory-Care-Suite 9 checklists. Critical-Access-Hospitals-Suite 12 checklists. Device-Associated-Infections-Suite 4 checklists. High-Level-Disinfection-Suite 3 checklists. Intensive-Care-Unit-Suite 11 checklists. Medical-Surgical-Acute-Care-Suite 12 checklists.