New AHRQ Toolkit Helps Hospitals Reduce Surgical Site Infections

AHRQ’s new Toolkit To Promote Safe Surgery helps hospitals reduce surgical site infections (SSIs). Based on the experiences of frontline providers in approximately 200 hospitals that participated in a national implementation project and successfully reduced SSIs, the toolkit was adapted from AHRQ’s Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) to the surgical setting. Toolkit strategies can help prevent infections that may occur with colorectal surgery and hysterectomies, two surgical procedures tracked by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for hospital-acquired conditions.

CUSP Toolkit

The Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) toolkit includes training tools to make care safer by improving the foundation of how your physicians, nurses, and other clinical team members work together. It builds the capacity to address safety issues by combining clinical best practices and the science of safety.

How to Use the CUSP Toolkit

The CUSP Toolkit can help your team learn key principles that increase safety. Once you’ve learned the basics, add-on modules can help you target certain safety issues.

Core CUSP Toolkit

Created for clinicians by clinicians, the CUSP toolkit is modular and modifiable to meet individual unit needs. Each module includes teaching tools and resources to support change at the unit level, presented through facilitator notes that take you step-by-step through the module, presentation slides, tools, videos.

Internet Citation: CUSP Toolkit. Content last reviewed December 2017. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/professionals/education/curriculum-tools/cusptoolkit/index.html