Thursday 18 November is Worldwide Pressure Injury Prevention Day 2021, a great opportunity to increase awareness about pressure injuries and how we prevent and manage them. Pressure Injuries are areas of localised damage to the skin and underlying soft tissue. These wounds usually form over bony prominences, like the tailbone and heels, or in relation to medical equipment such as a face mask pressing on the face.
Pressure injuries are a serious complication that are preventable. They can cause reduced quality of life, pain, suffering, and increased length of stay for our patients. We can prevent pressure injury development by undertaking the following actions:
- Check if your patient is at risk
- Implement preventative strategies
- Document, document, document
- Refer to the Monash Health Pressure Injury: Prevention and Management Clinical Guideline for information on pressure injury prevention and management
Online events this week
On Thursday 18 November, Molnlycke is running a webinar in support of pressure injury prevention. The topic is ‘Medical Device Related Pressure Injuries- lessons learnt during the COVID-19 pandemic’ and will feature a presentation from Dr Michelle Barakat-Johnson , Clinical Lead and Hospital-Acquired Complications Operational Coordinator for Pressure Injury at Sydney Local Health District. For more information on the session and how to register, please follow the link.
In addition to this, Smith and Nephew invites you to tune into STOP Pressure Injury events. You can hear from the experts about the latest in pressure injury prevention and key learnings during the pandemic in both acute and community settings. Don’t miss these educational events by registering and adding them to your calendar!
All of the events are available from 2pm on the day and on demand, certificates of attendance will be available upon completion.
| Date | Title | Speaker | Links |
| 10th November | Pressure Injury Prevention in the ICU | Tracy Nowicki | Listen here | Add to Calendar |
| 18th November | Pressure Injury Prevention in ICU & Let’s talk about COVID-19 skin changes | Tracy Nowicki | Watch here | Add to Calendar |
| 18th November | Pressure injury prevention & management in the time of COVID-19: Challenges in the Community | Fleur Trezise | Watch here | Add to Calendar |
| 24th November | Innovations in Pressure Injuries and updates on 2021 guidelines | Dimitri Beeckman | Watch here | Add to Calendar |
Monash Health resources
The team at Monash Health have made a number of resources available to employees. These work to increase knowledge of pressure injury prevention:
- The Monash Health National Standards Training – Preventing and Managing Pressure Injuries support clinicians to understand and deliver high quality pressure injury care.
- Pressure Injury staging lanyards designed to assist clinicians in accurately staging pressure injuries are available to order. They can be ordered via iPROC using the order code 173661.
- To find out more about pressure injuries, you can visit the pressure injury page on the intranet.
The National Pressure Injury Advisory Panel has a number of resources to aid pressure injury prevention, which you can find on their website.
Approved by Karin White