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Nursing

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Submitted By natkins23
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Western Governors University
XTT Task 1

January 2, 2015

CURRENT NURSING PRACTICE
In the United States there are approximately 5% of sterile surgical operations that will become infected each year. The number one nosocomial infections regarding surgical patients are infections at the surgical site (Kalb, Lefevre, Dididze, & Levi, 2013). For reductions of infections on any surgical site, this skin will need to be cleaned (or prepped) and covered with a sterile towel or drape. The site of the incision is prepped so that bacteria or microbes that cause the infection are found on the skin surface. Due to these microbes, prepping a patient’s skin will be the most important step prior to any surgery. Different hospitals throughout the United States use many different products for the cleaning or prepping stage. At the hospital of my place of employment, there are three different agents that can be used. This list includes Chlorhexidine gluconate, chlorhexidine alcohol, and povidone iodine. Any type of infection involving the incision site can cause complications that could be long term for any patient to deal with and may have financial consequences to any hospital. This particular hospital is considering a change to standardize the prepping solution and needs to determine the cost factor if it were to change to a new product or to add premixed applicators of particular type of surgical prep solution.
At this hospital, the current standard is using a surgical prep cleanse that the primary surgeon chooses to use. The hospital’s policy has no set standard for a particular prep solution being used. The CDC, in 1999, listed guidelines for prevention of infections at the incision site, including the use of an antiseptic cleanser for prepping of skin (Jarral, McCormack, Ibrahim, & Shipolini, 2011). There has not been one solution used as a referral over any

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