The Journal of hospital infection
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Epidural analgesia is used as a method of pain relief throughout the UK. It is used short-term in obstetric practice, following surgery and after trauma, and also longer-term for malignancy and chronic pain. ⋯ To minimize infection risk, epidural catheters should be inserted using an aseptic technique and subsequently checked at least daily, looking for evidence of superficial and deep infection. There should be a dedicated pain team to ensure that education of staff occurs and to carry out regular audits of the service.
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We investigated the value of a full-time audit nurse personally following up every patient from admission to 30 days postoperatively in order to obtain accurate surgical wound infection rates. Our results show that this type of audit is an effective, although time-consuming, way of collecting accurate data on wound infection rates. It enabled the early identification of problem areas in practice and facilitated the adoption of evidence based practice. As a result of the audit there was a significant reduction in the clean wound infection rate from 13.9% in November 1995 to 7.9% in March 1998 (P= 0.05).