In each issue of
Wound Care Today
we investigate a hot topic in wound care. In
this issue, Jason Beckford-Ball asks...
T
here are certain clichés
that seem to find a special
place in the general public’s
perception of health services — for
example, that every spare inch in
A&E is filled with patients being
looked after on trolleys; or that
nurses always need to be told to
wash their hands. No matter how
much fact there is in these accepted
‘truths’, once they are established,
no amount of good care or PR can
shift them.
Are pressure ulcers in danger of
landing nurses in the dock?
Unfortunately for those of us
involved in wound care, the widespread
development of pressure ulcers is
also in danger of becoming a popular
myth, with press reports focusing on
payouts awarded to patients through
poor care in hospitals and nursing
homes (‘NHS: 700 victims of bed sores
through hospital neglect receive £16m
in payouts’—
Daily Mirror
).
Not only are pressure ulcers now
acknowledged as a sign of sub-
standard care in an organisation
(‘Nurses face new focus on reducing
pressure ulcers’—
Nursing Times
),
there are also campaigns to
eradicate avoidable pressure ulcers
altogether (‘Stop the Pressure’—
.
As well as the distressing
implications for patients, much
of this new drive against pressure
ulcers is driven by cost — as
recently as October last year, the
health secretary Jeremy Hunt was
bemoaning the increase of litigation
in the NHS, (‘NHS errors costing
billions a year - Jeremy Hunt’—
BBC News
), stating that the NHS
had spent £1.3 billion on payouts
after being sued by patients over
poor care. The Department of
Health identified four major areas
of patient safety — falls and trips;
pressure ulcers; urinary infections;
and deep vein thrombosis (DVT).
Now that the problem
has been identified, there are
significant moves to monitor
the incidence of pressure ulcers,
and it is incumbent upon health
services to record pressure ulcer
rates using mechanisms like the
‘Patient safety thermometer’ (www.
safetythermometer.nhs.uk). There
are even penalties for those trusts
who fail to cut the number of
pressure ulcers by half (‘Trusts to be
told to halve pressure ulcers or face
fines’—
Health Service Journal
).
But, how did pressure ulcers
come to be such a drain on NHS
resources and how has such an
obvious manifestation of poor
care become so widespread?
Unfortunately, it has to be said that
6
WOUND CARE TODAY
2015,Vol 2, No 1
WOUND WATCH
i
