Pressure ulcers (PU) are in the top ten patient safety incidents reported in England. They can impact on patients of any age from premature babies to those at end of life and across all care settings and environments. PUs have a negative impact on patients’ quality of life, causing pain, discomfort, and significant disruption to their lives and their families’ lives. They increase the workload for those delivering care and may extend the length of hospital stay and increase the need for antibiotics, increasing organisational costs and may lead to litigation. The prevention of this common harm is therefore high on the NHS agenda.
Under PSIRF, organisations working with their commissioners and other stakeholders, are required to develop a Patient safety incident response policy and plan. The plan will help to guide a more considered and proportionate response to patient safety incidents to allow resources to be invested in undertaking good quality systems-based learning responses where it matters most. As PUs are one of the most common types of patient safety incident, we know that there will be questions about how to apply the PSIRF principles in relation to responding to PUs.
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