The systematic review and meta-analysis documents that use of an evidence-based, surgical care bundle in patients undergoing colorectal surgery significantly reduced the risk of SSI.

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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.

The qualitative experience of having a surgical site infection (SSI) is often overlooked. The aim of this study was to present a description of how SSIs affect the lives of patients and their families. Seventeen former patients from three hospitals in England were interviewed to explore their experience of having an SSI. The interview data was transcribed and analysed into the following themes – horror stories, physical effects, psychological effects, effect on families, feelings of relief, not blaming the hospital, and lack of support after discharge. Numerous articles describe SSIs as being ‘distressing’ for patients. This study reveals the extent of the distress, with patients describing feeling ‘utter despair’ and ‘wanting to die’. These symptoms continued for months after patients had been discharged from hospital.

In this article we explore the experience of suffering from a surgical site infection, a common complication of surgery affecting around 5 per cent of surgical patients, via an interview study of 17 patients in the Midlands in the UK. Despite their prevalence, the experience of surgical site infections has received little attention so far. In spite of the impairment resulting from these iatrogenic problems, participants expressed considerable stoicism and we interpret this via the notion of emotional capital. This idea derives from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Helga Nowotny and Diane Reay and helps us conceptualise the emotional resources accumulated and expended in managing illness and in gaining the most from healthcare services. Participants were frequently at pains not to blame healthcare personnel or hospitals, often discounting the infection's severity, and attributing it to chance, to ‘germs’ or to their own failure to buy and apply wound care products. The participants' stoicism was thus partly afforded by their refusal to blame healthcare institutions or personnel. Where anger was described, this was either defused or expressed on behalf of another person. Emotional capital is associated with deflecting the possibility of complaint and sustaining a deferential and grateful position in relation to the healthcare system.