Critical care nurse
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Critical care nurse · Jun 2013
The Healthy Skin Project: changing nursing practice to prevent and treat hospital-acquired pressure ulcers.
Hospital-acquired pressure ulcers are serious clinical complications that can lead to increased length of stay, pain, infection, and, potentially, death. The surgical progressive care unit at Sharp Grossmont Hospital, San Diego, California, developed the multidisciplinary Healthy Skin Project to decrease the prevalence of hospital-acquired pressure ulcers. ⋯ Prevention and a multidisciplinary approach are effective in reducing the occurrence of hospital-acquired pressure ulcers.
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Pain is a common and distressing symptom in critically ill patients. Uncontrolled pain places patients at risk for numerous adverse psychological and physiological consequences, some of which may be life-threatening. ⋯ Several tools have been developed to identify objective measures of pain, but the best tool has yet to be identified. A comprehensive search on the reliability and validity of observational pain scales indicated that although the Critical-Care Pain Observation Tool was superior to other tools in reliably detecting pain, pain assessment in individuals incapable of spontaneous neuromuscular movements or in patients with concurrent conditions, such as chronic pain or delirium, remains an enigma.