Date of Conferral

2021

Degree

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

School

Nursing

Advisor

Patricia A. Senk

Abstract

Surgical site infections (SSIs) reflect a serious complication in modern healthcare and are a substantial burden to healthcare systems and service payers worldwide in terms of patient morbidity, mortality, and additional costs. The Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP), introduced in 2006, was developed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to reduce SSI rates by 25%. However, SCIP was retired in 2015. Given the considerable financial burden of SSIs and because SSIs may be prevented using evidence-based measures, it was worth revisiting and re-evaluating the quality improvement efforts brought about by the success of the evidence-based SCIP initiative. This project aimed to examine the relationship between SCIP infection-prevention process-of-care measures and SSI rates between the years of high SCIP compliance, and several years after it was retired. The nature of this doctoral project was a quality improvement evaluation via a retrospective review of medical records acquired from the first quarter of 2014 to the fourth quarter of 2018. The SCIP core measure guidelines were used to define standards for care and thresholds for adherence. SSI rates were extracted and aggregated to look at trends and the chi-square test was used to show the relationship between two categorical variables. The analysis showed a significant difference between the proportions of infections from those of high SCIP compliance compared to the years following SCIP retirement (SCIP (Χ2(2) = 11.12, p < .004). The improvement of individual, community, and societal health is a significant contribution made by the nursing profession. The concept of SSI is essential in building the nursing science that will lead to identifying sound nursing interventions in the perioperative period.

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