This is in addition to the pain and suffering caused to the individual.
In Hackney we identified that all of the patients being admitted to hospital with existing pressure ulcers had recent contact with health or social care services in the community. We therefore hypothesised that increasing awareness and education of pressure ulcer risk and prevention for non-nursing health and social care workers has the potential to reduce the number of pressure ulcers and the severity of ulcers that do develop across the borough.
A multi-organisational, multi-professional working group was set up and a 3 strand plan was developed to approach this work:
1 Identification of an appropriate non-nursing pressure ulcer risk screening tool for use in the community (including residential homes and housing with care schemes) Following a number of pilots across home care providers and housing with care schemes, the Pressure Ulcer Risk Triggers Tool from yourturn.org has been selected as the tool to roll out for use by the whole workforce of social services carers in the community.
2. An education framework to develop non-nursing community staff skills in pressure ulcer risk recognition and prevention. A successful bid for HEE funding means that we are able to provide training in the use of the tool as well as general prevention strategies to all social services care workers in the borough as well as key health professionals to act as champions. We will also develop an e-learning package to refresh skills on an annual basis.
3. A campaign to raise awareness of pressure ulcer risk and prevention among service users and carers across the borough. A campaign targeting those potentially at risk of PU and their carers will include a newly developed internet and intranet page, pressure ulcer awareness packs to be distributed to GP surgeries around the borough and the development of an app aimed at patients or carers. Training for carers will begin in Autumn 2016 and roll out of the screening tool with happen alongside this.
In addition, the various awareness resources will be developed and distributed/launched over the next 9 months.
We will primarily be measuring the number of community acquired pressure ulcers reported on admission to hospital as well as the grading of these ulcers and hope to start seeing a drop in these numbers over the next 2-3 years.