An audit of pressure ulcer incidence in a palliative care setting

This article reports a continuous audit of pressure ulcer incidence within a specialist palliative care unit over 2 years. Details of every patient admission were considered (542 patients). Of these, 26.1% were admitted with pressure ulcers while 12.0% developed pressure damage during their stay. The retrospective audit looked at the ulcers developing in the unit and found these patients were older, stayed 12 days longer and more of them died than the average for all patients admitted to the unit. In total, 95.3% were accurately assessed at 'high' or 'very high' risk using the Waterlow (1985) Pressure Sore Risk Assessment Tool and 89.2% of ulcers were Grade 1 or 2 measured using the Stirling Pressure Sore Severity Scale (Reid and Morrison, 1994). Of all developing ulcers, 78.4% were sacral and the position of the tumour, as well as comfort and positioning difficulties were considered most often responsible. Despite this knowledge and many 'improvements' introduced, the incidence did not improve with superficial ulcers often developing in the last days of life.