title: Patient narratives of surgical site infection: implications for practice.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Exploring patients' experiences has been used widely within healthcare to improve clinical service delivery. To date there has been minimal patient input of this kind into aspects of surgical site infection (SSI), such as surveillance or prevention interventions.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To obtain information from patients' experiences of SSIs to improve clinical practice.
  
  
  METHODS
  Narrative interviews with 17 patients with SSIs (four deep, 12 organ space and one superficial) from three hospitals in England were conducted followed by thematic content analysis.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Patients lacked overall awareness, concern and understanding of SSIs. Seven patients did not know that they had SSIs and, judging from patients' accounts, staff may have contributed to the lack of awareness by not informing patients of SSIs or downplaying their existence. The use of primary care resources was considerable and six of the patients were absent from work for two to four months.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  SSIs have a low profile among patients which, if it were raised, could increase compliance with preventive interventions. This study confirms the appropriateness of using patient self-assessment post-discharge surveillance questionnaires to identify SSI symptoms, and highlights the need to identify total costings including to primary care, patients and the economy.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Health and Life Science, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. jtanner@dmu.ac.uk
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Tanner
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Padley
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Davey
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Murphy
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Brown
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D004739:England; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012647:Self-Assessment; D013530:Surgical Wound Infection / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000517:prevention & control*