Vol. VII, No. 4Archive > April, 2006
4 Steps You Can Take Today to Reduce Your SSIs
A review of widely accepted but not widely practiced strategies.
Diane Skorupski, RN, MS, CNOR, and Donna Straley, RN, CNOR
Most infections are associated with poorly designed processes, not poorly performing healthcare workers. That's what motivated us when we set out to redesign our infection control protocol here at Lancaster General Hospital. Like you, we wanted to increase compliance with our prevention standards and decrease our SSIs. To do so, however, we had to track our patients after they left our hands and gauge the impact our new processes had on our SSI rates. Here are the four processes we adopted and what we learned from each.
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