Pressure Ulcer Prevention
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PURPOSE OF A PU EVALATION
Let's pick up where we left off in Step 2: What action is required if a nursing home resident is admitted with a pressure ulcer (PU) or, despite your best efforts, develops one? This section discusses procedures for completing an important assessment that is often left incomplete in nursing homes: PU evaluation.
Essentially a wound assessment, PU evaluation is recommended in all the best practice guidelines (see our Links page) for several reasons. Data from this evaluation:
- help guide interventions,
- provide a basis for comparison to evaluate healing, and
- help predict time to healing.
What the practice guidelines imply but stop short of spelling out is that if wound assessments are conducted at baseline and regular intervals thereafter, then there's an excellent chance that PU treatment and management will be carried out in an equally conscientious, clinically appropriate manner. The wound assessments, in other words, set the stage for--and inform--the procedures that follow.
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