Thursday, October 18, 2012

Your Contributions are Important

The National Decubitus Foundation is presently concentrating its efforts on urging states to require full disclosure of medical errors by hospitals, including Stage III and IV pressure ulcers.  This is an expensive and time-consuming process, but we believe it to be the most effective way of exposing those hospitals that continue to cause bedsores, and getting them to adopt the NDF Prevention Protocol. 

Please join in the fight to make hospitals accountable by contributing now.  Thank you.

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Friday, October 12, 2012

UCLA Findings Confirm NDF Recommendations

The UCLA School of Nursing has published a study showing that those hospital patients allowed to develop a bedsore have a significanly increased chance of death.  This study, in the September issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, only confirms the NDF study of July 2008 in Advances in Skin and Wound Care.  The NDF study stated "Pressure ulcers are a significant cause of death in hospitals, although the recorded cause of death often disguises this fact."

The UCLA study states "This is a serious issue, and now we have data that can help the healthcare system address this ongoing problem.  Individuals entering the hospital with the risk conditions that we've identified should send up a immediate warning signal that appropriate steps should be taken to minimize the chance of pressure ulcers occuring."  This is exactly the procedure identified by the NDF Prevention Protocol, where risk conditions are identified by use of the Braden Scale, and the steps to be tken involve immediate use of the appropriate supporrt surface.

The UCLA study also found that of 3000 patients identified as entering the hospital with an existing bedsore, 16.7 percent developed at least one additional bedsore on a different part of their body.  This is strong support for the NDF position that all hospitals must be required to invest in sufficient pressure relieving support surfaces to accomodate all at-risk patients at admission.