2 However, standardised education for health care professionals performing surgical wound dressings is lacking. Health care professionals caring for patients with surgical wounds need specialist expertise, knowledge, and skills to ensure optimum evidence‐based wound care. 1 Surgical site infections (SSIs) are one of the most common types of HCAI, representing up to 20% of this patient group. It can be used as both an adjunct to an educational programme and as a tool to assess a practitioner's performance of a wound‐dressing procedure in both simulated and clinical practice contexts.Įvery day, approximately 81 000 people acquire a health care‐associated infection (HCAI) in hospitals across Europe. The metric is a tool that identifies the standard to be attained in the performance of acute surgical wound dressings. The final metric has three phases, 31 individual steps, 18 errors, and 27 sentinel errors. The Delphi panel deliberation verified the face and content validity of the metric. The metric was then subjected to a process of cyclical evaluation by a Delphi panel (n = 21) to obtain face and content validity of the metric. The ANTT wound‐dressing observational metric was stress tested for clarity, the ability to be scored, and interrater reliability, calculated during a further phase of video analysis. This facilitated the identification of the discrete component steps, potential errors, and sentinel (serious) errors, which characterise a wound dressing procedure and formed part of the observational metric.

Video recordings of acute surgical wound‐dressing procedures performed by nurses in clinical (n = 11) and simulated (n = 3) settings were viewed repeatedly and were iteratively deconstructed by the metric development group. A scoping review of the literature provided a background empirical perspective relating to wound‐dressing procedure performance. A team of clinicians, academics, and researchers came together to develop an observational metric using an iterative six‐stage process, culminating in a Delphi panel meeting. Alcohol is not a sterilant.The aim of this study was to develop an observational metric that could be used to assess the performance of a practitioner in completing an acute surgical wound‐dressing procedure using aseptic non‐touch technique (ANTT). Autoclaving and gas sterilization are common effective methods.

If aseptic technique and instruments cannot be used, a scientific justification must be provided in the protocol which will be reviewed by the IACUC and approved on a case-by-case basis.Īseptic technique includes preparation of the animal subject and the surgeon-including attire, scrub, and gloves sterilization of instruments, supplies, and implanted materials and the use of operative techniques to reduce the likelihood of infection. Please ensure that your animal use applications specify that all recovery surgeries will be done using aseptic technique.

To aid you in this goal, written surgical guidelines for rodents are provided. Exceptions to these guidelines can sometimes be made but must be fully justified and approved in advance by the IACUC. This requirement is met by utilizing the surgery room contained within the Boston University Animal Science Center (BU ASC) and/or, in the case of rodents, identifying a dedicated area within your laboratory for animal surgery. In addition, the regulations require a dedicated area for all surgeries performed on vertebrate animals. This means setting up and maintaining a sterile field and utilizing sterile technique throughout the surgery. Therefore, please be advised that ALL survival surgeries performed on any vertebrate animal (including rodents), whether considered major (open body cavity) or minor, must employ aseptic technique. BU IACUC Revised January 2014, Revised May 2019Īs stated in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, which our assurance with the federal government requires us to follow, both major as well as minor surgical procedures on laboratory animals require aseptic technique and instruments (cf.

Aseptic technique in surgery