Gaps Between Evidence and Practice in Prevention of Surgical Site Infection in Spain: A Survey of the Observatory of Infection in Surgery

A web-based survey to the members of the Colorectal Chapter of 10 Spanish Associations of surgical nurses and surgeons of different specialities. A link to the web page containing the survey will be disseminated via email, newsletter and Twitter.

A board from the Surgical Infection Section did a review of evidence and previous guidelines to be used in the evaluation of the results. The most recent clinical practice guidelines have been analysed. According to the review, the preventive measures analysed in the survey have been distributed into two groups: high or low level of evidence.

The survey aim to assess knowledge, beliefs, and practices of attending nurses and surgeons on preventative measures. Furthermore, the questions address the level of accordance between their beliefs and the protocols or the usual practice of their units. The agreement rate between the beliefs and usual practice of all respondents will be calculated on a scale from 0 to 100. For discussion, the responses on the implementation of major surgical site infection (SSI) prevention measures will be compared with the recommendations of the expert group.

The results will be expressed in percentages on the total answers obtained. Responses will be entered into a computerized database that will be analysed using an specific program. The results will be analysed using the chi-square test with statistical significance defined as p <0.05.