In many surgical procedures, surgical drains have involved several critical steps in draining the abdominal and
thoracic cavities. Therefore this study aimed to assess the nurses' knowledge and performance regarding prevention of
abdominal drains placements' infection for postoperative patients at the Gastroenterology Surgical Center affiliated with
Mansoura University. So a descriptive cross-sectional study design was utilized to conduct this study on 50 on-duty
nurses, with two structured self-administrated questionnaires to assess socio-demographic and occupational
characteristics, knowledge, and an observation checklist to assess performance. Results of the current study showed that
66.0% and 64.0% of the nurses had fair, and incompetent total levels of knowledge and performance respectively. Based
on the study results the researcher concludes that two-thirds of nurses have fair total knowledge level, and almost twothirds
have an incompetent total performance level regarding prevention of abdominal drains placements' infection for
postoperative patients. The researcher recommends designing and implementing educational programs for nurses to
achieve competency regarding prevention of abdominal drains placements' infection for postoperative patients.