Louise Morris, Tissue Viability Nurse talks about using Your Turn as part of a pressure ulcer prevention strategy in Worcestershire:
The Your Turn Campaign was first introduced to the Trust in April 2007. Although the Trust had made significant progress in the prevention and management of pressure ulcers, there were still areas that we wanted to further improve. The Your Turn Campaign was seen as a support mechanism to promote a unified, proactive pressure ulcer prevention programme, which would help the Trust achieve its clinical, operational and financial objectives ultimately enhancing our patients experience and safety. The Tissue Viability Team and Link Nurses currently continue to utilise this campaign fulfilling these objectives successfully.
Many of the recent activities and achievements implemented positively link to various Department of Health (DoH) Quality initiatives. The Essence of Care (EOC) pressure ulcer benchmarking process has been reviewed and improved to provide more in depth assessment about the quality of care being provided enabling assessment and comparison of how clinical departments are performing. The Pressure Ulcer High Impact Actions (HIA) and Commissioning for Quality and Innovation, (CQUIN) has provided an opportunity to re-visit and improve our monitoring and audit processes and encouraging staff to be innovative about improving standards.
Some of the latest quality improvements/developments include:
- Pressure ulcer prevention core care plan
- Pressure ulcer treatment core care plan
Both of these being quick to complete and providing reminders about timely completion of clinical incidents and root cause analysis
- Updating the pressure ulcer risk assessment to include time of completion to ensure NICE guideline standards are being met and inclusion of pressure ulcer categories should the patient have a pressure ulcer so the severity can be identified and denoted accurately
- Tissue viability documentation pathway to ensure the correct tissue viability documentation is implemented in a timely manner and not missed
- A repositioning schedule to ensure patient repositioning is recorded accurately
- Promotion of the Thompson chart to ensure the appearance of patients pressure areas are recorded
- Updating the patient information leaflet to reflect the Your Turn Campaign format
- Tissue viability service information leaflet
- Pressure ulcer work book and pressure ulcer competency framework
- Mandatory training that references the Your Turn Campaign
- As well as Tissue Viability Link Nurses, a forum has been inaugurated to promote High Impact Actions/Energising for Excellence (CQUIN), Essence of Care, QUIPP and Your Turn, including facilitating audits and actions. Once pressure ulcer related Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) are established, the group will be active in facilitating this survey