PERI OPERATIVE PROCEDURE CHANGE Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

PERI OPERATIVE PROCEDURE CHANGE - Essay Example Besides, before an operation preoperative care should also be conducted to a patient because it usually allows many patients to have better results after surgery. The preoperative care includes psychological and physical preparation. Physical care preparations include studying and analyzing patient history like anesthesia history. Thus, laboratory tests like electrolytes, CBC, activated partial thromboplastin time and prothrombin are done (Keele, 2011). Psychological preparations like answering patient question before an operation usually decrease their anxiety. The perioperative procedure that will be analyzed in this essay is the routine shaving of surgical sites. Shaving of surgical sites is usually performed by surgeon assistant (Evans, 1998). The hospital administrator or chief surgeon determines the basis for practice after reviewing the patient history and approving the best procedure to be executed (Evans, 1998). The procedure is usually carried out by using depilatory creams , which dissolve the hair, and it is usually a slower process as the skin has to be in contact with cream for 15-30 minutes. Hair can also be removed by using clippers, with sharp edges to cut hair close to the patient skin leaving short stubble of about 0.04 inches long. Shaving is the most common method because it uses a sharp blade held within the head of the razor which is swapped over the patient skin to remove hair. Shaving, which is commonly used by many surgeons, has been implicated to cause higher risks of infections. Shaving result into microscopic cuts and abrasion, thus act as a block of the skin’s barrier defense against microorganism colonies (Hakim and Papalois, 2007). On the flip side, depilatory creams have a catastrophic disadvantage in that there could be an allergic reaction to the cream thus forcing nurses to conduct a patch test 24 hours prior to operation time thus leads to increased cost. The rationale for making the decision usually lies to the operat ion team and factors like allergy and health record due to SSIs infections determines the best method to be employed (Hakim and Papalois, 2007). Besides, shaving of surgical sites before any operation is usually carried out in a specific manner to reduce the spread of SSI and avoid health catastrophe that a patient may suffer due to poor administration of safety procedure during shavings (Fisher et al, 2007). Preparation of surgery of years has included the removal of body hair form the intended surgical wound site. Hair is mainly removed as its presence can impede with the exposure of the incision and subsequent wound. Besides, hair is also alleged to be associated with lack of cleanliness thus hair removal has shown too led to reduction of surgical site infections. A surgical site infection (SSIs) contributes tremendously to surgical morbidity and mortality every year. SSIs accounts for15% of all nosocomial infections experienced by patients after surgery. There are three types of SSIs defined by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and they include incisional or organ infection, which is further subdivided as superficial (it mainly involves only the skin and subcutaneous tissue) and versus deep which infects the underlying soft tissue beneath the skin. Most of the SSI cases, the pathogen source, is the native flora of the patient’s skin, mucous membranes or hallow viscera. When a patient skin is incised, the underlying skin tissue is uncovered to the