Standardizing skin care across settings

While healthcare providers are struggling to provide optimum patient care and health outcomes in a cost efficient manner, patients are demanding assurance that the care they receive offers the best chance for health improvement. The way to achieve the most effective and efficient treatments is through knowledge of current research and treatment options and standardized care. Resources are the AHCPR's Clinical Practice Guidelines on urinary incontinence and pressure ulcers in adults. Kaiser Permanente's Northern California Region created a Task Force to demonstrate nursing's contribution to positive patient outcomes, investigate and capture opportunities to participate in an interdisciplinary approach to measuring the effectiveness of patient care, and focus efforts on measurement, improvement, research, and development. Part of this effort was the conductance of a study which demonstrated that the absorbent product with the least expensive purchase price that had traditionally been used for incontinent patients was the most expensive product to use. The results of that study have been used, not only to improve purchase decisions, but also to teach nurses how theory, research, and practice are related to issues that concern caring for their patients.