A strategy combining multiple wound prevention practices with behavior modification techniques helped prevent new pressure ulcers during a single-site study in England.
Created by nursing home staff, tissue viability nurses and researchers, the wound care bundle emphasized skin inspections, the use of support surfaces and repositioning. It also required staff to tie assessments to resident risk.
The nursing home studied only charted repositioning as a preventative tool in 462 resident bed days leading up to study implementation, and researchers reported five new pressure ulcers in that period. Over the next 1,181 resident bed days, during which the bundled approach was adopted, no new pressure ulcers developed.
Though staff reported that the prevention bundle was “acceptable,” researchers in Manchester, England, encountered several problems. They had trouble finding tissue viability nurses to implement and train staff; after training, nursing home staff still complied with support surface efforts only 22% of the time and skin inspections 21% of the time; and frontline staff noted only a risk assessment score for 6% of residents.
Despite that, the home had an increase in reporting over the pre-intervention phase.
“The participants explained that this greater awareness resulted in their care becoming more comprehensive,” study authors reported.
From the May 1, 2019 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
