Perioperative registered nurses knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and barriers regarding pressure ulcer prevention in...

Hospital acquired pressure ulcers have a detrimental effect on patient quality of life, morbidity, mortality, and cost to the healthcare industry. Little is known about pressure ulcer prevention in perioperative services.

The objectives of this study were to describe perioperative registered nurses (RNs) knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and barriers about pressure ulcer prevention and to determine if knowledge and the availability of a pressure ulcer staging tool are predictors of pressure ulcer prevention behavior.

A cross-sectional descriptive pilot study was conducted. Sixty-two perioperative RNs from 10 acute care hospitals participated.

Perioperative nurses believed carrying out pressure ulcer prevention strategies is essential to nursing practice but only two-thirds reported conducting pressure ulcer risk assessment on all patients and daily assessment on at risk patients. Results indicated a knowledge deficit regarding assessment and prevention of pressure ulcers as performance on the PUKT (72%) fell below the recommended score of 90%. Results of binary logistic regression indicated that knowledge as measured by the PUKT and availability of a pressure ulcer staging tool were statistically significant (p=0.03) predictors of pressure ulcer prevention behavior. The initial model without the predictor variables, indicated an overall success rate of correct predictions of 64% which increase to 73% when the predictor variables were added to the initial model.

Although perioperative nurses believe that pressure ulcer prevention is important, a knowledge deficit exists and there is a need for pressure ulcer prevention education.