Pressure Ulcers In Nursing

The field of nursing is one that requires much passion, hard work and critical thinking. It is a nurses job to promote the well being of their patients and help the return to normal function. However unfortunate events occur, resulting in patients receiving adverse health conditions as a result of being in a medical facility One of the most prevalent of these nosocomial conditions are pressure ulcers. Not only do the patients suffer from the pain of pressure ulcers but the hospitals and medical facilities are effected as well. A randomized controlled trial conducted by Pickham et al. reported that “ Pressure ulcers are insidious complications that affect approximately 2.5 million patients and account for approximately US$$ 11 billion in annual health care spending each year” (2016). Pressure ulcers not only cause the patient pain but “even contribute to disability and

In their research study they tested the use of “a patient-monitoring system designed to optimize patient-turning practices” (Pickham et al. 2016), this system involves sensors being attached to patients and allows the nurses to determine “the patient 's current position and time-to-next-turn” (Pickham et al. 2016). As a result of this evidence based practice, these researchers were able to use their clinical expertise to gather patient data in order to improve nursing practice, as a result “After implementation of the system, compliance and patient turning was reported to have increased significantly from 64 to 98 %” (Pickham et al. 2016), therefore this is definitely something that could assist all nurses in helping the to perform their jobs more proficiently. However since this kind of monitoring is not currently used in all medical facilities, the importance of frequent re-positioning of patients is something I will remember and implement