New International Guidelines for the Prevention and Treatment of Pressure Injuries

In association with the Australian College of Nursing (ACN), Arjo invites all nurse leaders to participate in a webinar on preventing, treating, and implementing pressure injury interventions in line with the new guidelines.

The webinar will be panelled by Associate Professor Emily Haesler, Professor Keryln Carville, and Ms Pam Mitchell RN, CNC.

 

What are pressure injuries?

A pressure injury, also known as a pressure ulcer, pressure sore or bed sore, are caused by unrelieved pressure and/or shear forces on any part of the body. Anytime you lie or sit down in the same position for a period of time, pressure is applied to different parts of your body. Any object that has continuous contact with your skin has the potential to cause a pressure injury. (Clinical Excellence Queensland, 2019).

Pressure injuries are the result of sustained unrelenting pressure that is not relieved by normal mobilization and risk is increased by reduced mobility, nutrition, continence and disease states such as vascular disease and diabetes. Pressure injury can also be caused by devices such as gastric tubes, catheters and tape.

Pressure injuries are a common health problem that occur across all clinical settings and represent a major health burden for individuals and health providers. They impact on reduced quality of life for individuals and their prevention and treatment results in substantial implicit and explicit costs to individuals and health care providers.

 

How much does it cost the public health care system?

The treatment costs of pressure injury in the Australian public hospital sector in 2012 -2013 was $938 Million Australian (Nguyen, Chaboyer and Whitty, 2015). The total treatment cost across health care in Australia including public, private, acute, aged care and home care is difficult to ascertain in totality due to the inaccessibility of data in all sectors. There is compelling evidence that prevention of pressure injury is a substantial cost savings to its treatment and in addition the impact upon patient’s quality of life and length of hospital stay is improved (Australian commission on safety and quality in healthcare, 2017).

The rates of pressure injury in immobile patients is high and there is an increasing cost to healthcare. ‘Every year, billions of dollars are spent on the treatment of pressure ulcers and associated morbidities, representing a significant portion of health care resource’ (Brem et.al 2010).

 

Why do I need to view this webinar?

The European Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel (EPUAP), the National Pressure Injury Advisory Panel (NPIAP), and the Pan Pacific Pressure Injury Alliance (PPPIA) have collaborated with 14 other international wound organisations to produce the Prevention and Treatment of Pressure Ulcers/Injuries: Clinical Practice Guideline, The International Guideline, which will be launched in mid-November.

The latest guidelines are an addition to the work of the guidelines that were published by EPUAP in 1998 then later by NPUAP in 2007. This was followed by these two groups coming together in 2009 to launch joint guidelines. Soon to follow was the work of the Pan Pacific Pressure Injury Alliance that initiated the term pressure injury and culminated in the launch of the global guidelines in 2014.

Now in its third edition, this is a much-expanded global international edition of the guideline. The International Guideline presents evidence-based recommendations and good practice statements to assist health professionals and consumers to deliver best practice in pressure injury care. The guideline aims to promote the best possible care for individuals, promote health professional knowledge, reduce care variance and guide cost-effective health care choices.

This webinar will be presented by Professor Keryln Carville who is the chair of the Pan Pacific pressure injury alliance along with Professor Emily Hassler and Pam Mitchel, to discuss the launch of the latest global guidelines on the prevention and management of pressure injury.

 

How will this webinar help me?

Nurses that care for patients across all sectors should be aware of the potential for injury from pressure and the mechanisms for mitigation as well as treatment. Pressure injury is identified by visualisation of stages that correlate to the depth of the injury that nurses should be familiar with. Stage one is non broken, non-blanching redness to the skin whilst stage four is a full thickness wound to the muscle, bone or tendon.

• The webinar will include discussion of the guideline methodology and presentation and outline how to use the guideline in clinical practice
• The presentation will review the recommendations and good practice statements in the guideline, discuss the strengths of evidence and strengths of recommendation, and highlight the implementation considerations that are included in the guideline to assist health professionals in making care decisions with their patients
• The webinar will discuss the input that was received from patient individuals and informal caregivers in the guideline development
• Content on preventing pressure injuries, treating pressure injuries and implementing pressure injury interventions will be discussed, with a focus on new recommendations that arise from the most recent published evidence.

Key event details

Date: Friday 6th December
Time: 2-3pm AEDT
Cost: Free

You can register for the event here.

This session is equivalent to 1 continuing professional development (CPD) hour from the Australia College of Nursing.

The webinar will be broadcast live from ACN in Canberra. Taking place directly after launching the new guidelines to Australia at the Wounds Australia Symposium, it will allow those not in attendance to hear an outline of the latest updates.

Arjo is a global supplier of medical devices, services and solutions and among their many offerings is a Pressure Injury Prevention Portfolio – see here.