Pressure Ulcer Prevention
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CONSIDER RISK ASSESSMENT SCORES AND REPOSITIONING ABILITY
Institute a triage system that ensures that the highest risk residents are the first to receive the four weekly reassessments. This system should take into account two types of assessment data:
- the resident's score on a standardized risk assessment conducted upon admission, and
- the resident's ability to reposition him- or herself.
With both the Norton and Braden scales, the two most commonly used assessment tools, the lower the resident's score, the greater the risk of PU development.
We Recommend the Braden Scale
Of these two scales, we recommend use of the Braden scale (available free from Prevention Plus), largely because it has been more extensively tested in nursing homes. It also is commonly used in nursing home research; so if your facility follows suit, you can compare your results to those reported in the literature. The remainder of this section assumes the use of the Braden scale to assess PU risk.
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