The importance of definitions and methods in surgical wound infection audit

We investigated the value of a full-time audit nurse personally following u p every patient from admission to 30 days postoperatively in order to obtai n accurate surgical wound infection rates. Our results show that this type of audit is an effective, although time-consuming, way of collecting accura te data on wound infection rates. It enabled the early identification of pr oblem areas in practice and facilitated the adoption of evidence based prac tice. As a result of the audit there was a significant reduction in the cle an wound infection rate from 13.9% in November 1995 to 7.9% in March 1998 ( P<0.05). (C) 2001 The Hospital Infection Society.