Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps are being taken to reduce variation in perioperative skin preparation practices across NHS trusts in England.

Quality perioperative care not only improves patient outcomes, but boosts hospitals’ productivity by reducing cancellations, shortening patients’ length of hospital stay, and minimising postoperative complications.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence provides the main evidence-based recommendations on perioperative skin preparation, and NHS England supports this by issuing safety alerts and setting expectations for how risks should be managed in practice.

The Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme also helps identify variation between trusts, such as differences in product choice or how consistently policies are followed, and encourages more standard approaches. The GIRFT programme has produced perioperative national guidance after observing national variation in decolonisation practice prior to elective surgery. Professional organisations like the Association for Perioperative Practice and the Royal College of Surgeons also provide practical guidance for clinical teams.

Based on this national guidance, each National Health Service trust is responsible for its own local policy, setting out clearly which products to use, how they should be applied, and how practice is monitored.