OneTogether:an update on the fight to reduce SSIs

One Together Partnership is a collaboration of different professional organisations, working together to reduce the opportunities for surgical site infection. It has been in existence since 2013 and among its founding partners include the Royal College of Nursing, Association for Perioperative Practice, Infection Prevention Society, the College of Operating Department Practitioners and 3M.1 Collaboration and information from the professions has been sought at a variety of meetings and conferences since 2013. Recently, the launch of a perioperative assessment tool has been heralded at the Infection Prevention Society and Quality Improvement for Surgical Teams (QIST) autumn conferences. The assessment tool has been made widely available on the organisations’ websites. The document is a welcome addition to the provision of standards for perioperative care and it is hoped  that it will be used to design and demonstrate improvements in surgical practice relating to infection control. Current sources of guidance are disparate, complex and not routinely available to surgical teams.  

This journal and this author has written for many years about surgical site infection, in the knowledge that it harms many patients, but the information, surveillance data and connection with surgical and perioperative care is rarely made and even more rarely fed back to surgeons and perioperative care staff. Much of surgical based practice has lacked direct evidence of an effect on surgical site infections, in fact much of perioperative care has, to date, been based on history and discipline rather than any fact. The scientific evidence has slowly emerged but has taken a very long time to influence and change the delivery of care. In other words, no quality improvement will ever be made unless there is assessment and feedback and knowledge of the sources of evidence and facts. The publication of an assessment tool linked to and based upon the evidence is therefore most welcome. It is easily accessible and straightforward to use, linking the evidence to aspects of perioperative practice. 

It is well known that many patients get a surgical site infection following surgery and the rate is consistently and reliably quoted as 16%. Data comes from the most recent point prevalence survey undertaken in English hospitals in 2011.2 It is also known that for accurate assessment of real surgical site infection rates, post discharge surveillance needs to be undertaken, so it is estimated that the quoted rate of infections following surgery may be an underestimate.