Nursing process-oriented bundled interventions and digital monitoring may improve surgical site infection prevention

Surgical site infection (SSI) remains a common healthcare-associated infection and is associated with prolonged hospitalization, readmission, increased costs, and adverse clinical outcomes. Because SSI prevention, detection, and management extend across the preoperative, intraoperative, postoperative, and post-discharge phases, SSI can be regarded as a perioperative outcome closely related to nursing assessment, surveillance, education, and continuity of care. This narrative review summarizes current evidence on perioperative SSI prevention from a nursing perspective, with emphasis on nursing process-oriented bundled interventions, digital surveillance, risk-stratified care, and nurse-led implementation strategies. Current evidence suggests that SSI prevention should move beyond isolated measures and be embedded into a continuous nursing pathway. Preoperative care should focus on risk identification, preparation verification, checklist-based checkpoints, and patient education. Intraoperative nursing should emphasize aseptic coordination, environmental control, physiological support, and actionable handover. Postoperative and post-discharge care should strengthen structured wound assessment, incision care, remote follow-up, and timely escalation of abnormalities. Digital tools, including electronic health record-based screening, remote wound monitoring, artificial intelligence-assisted image triage, and digital risk stratification, may extend nursing surveillance, but their effectiveness depends on clearly assigned responsibilities, predefined response timelines, workflow integration, and quality indicators. Nurse-led standardized pathways, stratified education, team training, and audit-feedback mechanisms are essential for translating evidence-based SSI prevention into stable clinical practice. Future research should further evaluate implementation quality, surveillance standardization, external validation of digital tools, cost-effectiveness, patient experience, and multidisciplinary sustainability.