Open AccessReliability and feasibility of registered nurses conducting web‐based surgical site infection surveillance in the community: A prospective cohort study
Author(s) -
McIsaac Corrine,
Bolton Laura L.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
international wound journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.867
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1742-481X
pISSN - 1742-4801
DOI - 10.1111/iwj.13464
Subject(s) - medicine , concordance , surgical site infection , cohort , web site , emergency medicine , prospective cohort study , surgical wound , health care , cohort study , medical emergency , family medicine , surgery , the internet , world wide web , computer science , economics , economic growth
Surgical site infections increase health care costs, morbidity, and mortality in 2% to 5% of surgical patients. Standardised post‐surgical surveillance is rare in community settings, causing under‐reporting and under‐serving of the documented 60% of surgical site infections occurring following hospital discharge. This study evaluated feasibility and concordance (inter‐rater reliability) of paired registered nurses using a web‐based surveillance tool ( how2trakSSI , based on validated guidelines) to detect surgical site infections for up to 30 days after surgery in a cohort of 101 patients referred to Calea Home Care Clinics in Toronto, Canada, March 2015 to July 2016. After paired registered nurse assessors used the tool‐less than 10 minutes apart to measure concordance 5 to 7 days postoperatively, they provided feedback on its usefulness at two teleconference discussion groups September 6 to 7, 2016. Overall concordance between assessors was 0.822, remaining consistently above 0.65 across assessor education level and experience, patient age and weight, and wound area. Assessors documented 39.6% surgical site infection prevalence 5 to 7 days after surgery, confirming clinical need, relevance, reliability, and feasibility of using this web‐based tool to standardise community surgical site infection surveillance, noting that it was user‐friendly, more efficient to use than traditional paper‐based tools and useful as a registry for tracking progress.