What Are Pressure Ulcers? Cayuga Medical Center’s Initiative

Intro: What are Pressure Ulcers? Cayuga Medical Center’s Initiative

Ideally, in modern medicine patients with wounds are bought to treatment facilities and when they leave they are healthier than when they came in. However, one problem threatens to change this. Pressure Ulcers, which form because of skin pressure reducing blood flow to an area of the body, have a habit of forming in patients with a variety of long-term problems as they are cared for in hospitals and nursing homes. The result of this is that in addition to whatever other problems a patient may have, the ulcer causes the skin and the tissue beneath the skin to die, and if the dead tissue is not quickly removed it can cause additional problems and pain for the patient. There are several factors that put one at risk of pressure ulcers, and these conditions are often difficult or impossible to treat. A typical pressure ulcer patient: suffers from mobility problems, is an older adult, has a spine or brain injury or disease such as multiple sclerosis, has a disease or condition that affect ones mental status, has fragile skin, has urinary incontinence or bowel incontinence or does not get enough nutrition. As most of these conditions are symptoms of old age or mental illness, these people will always be at risk of pressure ulcers, meaning the pressure ulcer prevention is there best chance of living comfortably. Pressure Ulcers can be treated but they are painful and if untreated they can result in death. They are also expensive to treat and lawsuits are common. Thus prevention is the priority for care providers for health and financial reasons.

With this in mind I worked with Cayuga Medical Center as part of my student consulting class taught by Dr. Laurie Miller. I worked alone on this project as no one else signed up to work with the CMC. The project was a “pressure ulcer initiative” and the doctors in the wound center at the CMC believed that they were seeing more pressure ulcers of increasing severity than they had in previous years and wanted to investigate. The tasks set before me were to research pressure ulcers, do a literature review and otherwise help develop solutions specific to Tompkins County. As I researched pressure ulcers and familiarized myself with the issue, it became obvious to me that if I wanted to understand what was happening to Tompkins County, I would need to look at data from Tompkins County and the CMC itself. After going through the necessary paperwork and requirements I was allowed to receive data from the CMC and witness a pressure ulcer being treated first hand. I also visited several nursing homes and home care providers in Tompkins County in order to find out what they knew of the problem and what they did about it. After these visits I presented at a large meeting to the CMC staff and care providers about the findings of this project and led a debate about how to tackle this problem. Now as a