Authors

Youa YangFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Winter 12-17-2019

Abstract

CRMC is a level one trauma and teaching hospital in Fresno, California. CRMC’s emergency department (ED) is licensed for 84 beds. When hall beds are added this ED can go up to 110 beds. CRMC sees over 9,000 patients a month. Due to an increase in hospital census and length of stay, this ED has a daily average of 30 inpatients boarding. In December of 2018, this ED had one hospital acquired pressure ulcers (HAPU). Barriers to preventing HAPU’s in the ED are rooms that are not big enough to accommodate hospital beds, inexperienced new nurses who are unaware of assessing and preventing pressure ulcers, and experienced ED nurses who are more focused on emergency nursing versus inpatient nursing. HAPU’s increase costs in hospitals, effects quality of care, and accrues penalties. Since HAPU’s are preventable it is in each hospitals interest to practice prevention. In January 2019, CRMC launched the “Save the Skin” campaign. The campaign was initiated in all units, including the ED. The campaign was an eight-week education bundle. After completion of the campaign, all CRMC nurses used the Save the Skin acronym with their skin assessments. Quarterly CRMC score cards showed an improvement of two consecutive months of zero HAPUs in the ED and a 44% decrease of HAPUs at CRMC.

Download

Share

COinS