Surgical Site Infection Prevention in Orthopaedic Nursing - A Descriptive Literature Review

Surgical site infection prevention in orthopaedic surgery is a problematic incidence that requires combination of various strategies preoperatively, intraoperatively, and postoperatively. Hence, the purpose of this literature review was to describe surgical site infection prevention and the barriers to infection prevention in orthopaedic nursing. This study aims to produce new knowledge that could utilise to enhance nursing practices in preventing surgical site infection in orthopaedic surgery. To gather the data, CINAHL, PubMed databases and a manual search was applied. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were generated to narrow down the searches. This process led to the selection of 12 articles that were analysed by utilising inductive content analysis. In line with this, two main categories and six generic categories that answered the research questions was formed. The study questions were “What are the existing nursing practices in surgical site infection prevention in orthopaedic nursing?” and “What are the barriers to surgical site infection prevention in nursing practice in orthopaedics?”. The data collected were analysed showed that a range of practices in surgical site infection prevention are currently being used in orthopaedic nursing. Most of the methods are preventing infection through combination of nursing interventions and managements like for instance, bundles of skin solutions for decontamination. Range of various opinions as well as general lack of consensus in pin site management, unable to relate to the theory related knowledge into practice, negative emotional impact on nurses, non-compliance and psychological burden of patients were identified as the main challenges. The results lead to the conclusions that surgical site infection has detrimental effects to both patients and healthcare providers. Therefore, it is significant to effectively implement the evidenced-based nursing practices to prevent, limit or eradicate the burden produced by SSI. On the other hand, there is a need for improvement in nursing perspective and practices as well as to manage the inconsistency between theory and practice