New practices help prevent pressure injuries

Over the past couple years Asante’s pressure injury work group has been developing strategies to lower Asante’s pressure injury rates.

Much of this work — including more robust education — is the result of your feedback from surveys. In fact, after posting ALEC training modules we saw an improvement in pressure injury prevention.

We’ve also made the following improvements:

• Chair cushions now available in MedSurg and Critical Care clean utility rooms for easier access.
• Admission order sets now include a prechecked item for nonsurgical skin and wound care protocol (adult).
• The Pressure Injury Prevention/Interventions, Guidelines, and Documentation; Braden Scale policy has been updated.
• Asante-wide education initiative was rolled out through assignment of ALEC modules, annual skills days and new-hire onboarding.
• The group created a pressure injury dashboard, investigation tool and rounding tool for leaders.

Hospital-acquired pressure injuries (HAPIs) should be reported in Midas+, our incident reporting system, to ensure events are reviewed and opportunities for improvement identified. Pressure injury data and trends continue to be reviewed monthly at the system-level health-care-acquired conditions and Patient Safety Council meetings with a focus on reducing pressure injury rates.

What’s next

We’re finalizing the nurse-driven therapeutic support surface protocol, which will ease bedside staff’s ability to order specialty beds.

Pressure injury will be a continuing Clinical Elements topic in 2023. For nurses, the education topics will focus on staging. CNAs and techs will learn about offloading and repositioning. Education also is offered for non-nursing roles.

Clean utility rooms will have quick references to help guide selection of pressure injury dressing and preventive skin care products.

You can find information on pressure injuries in ALEC/HealthStream’s learning catalog, at Wound Care Department webpage and in the Therapeutic Support Surface Guide.