Effects of Pressure Ulcer Classification System Education Programme on Visual Differential Diagnostic Ability of Pressure Ulcer Classification in Critical Care Units

Introduction: Pressure ulcer is a common complication in patients admitted to critical care units. Detection of different grades of Pressure ulcer is one of the important aspects of nursing care in critical care units. Therefore, nurses empowerment to care for Pressure ulcer is important. Considering the importance of nurses in preventing and timely identification of Pressure ulcer and the choice of appropriate care and treatment, as well as the increasing trend in the number of affected patients, especially in critical care units, this study aimed to investigate the effect of nurses empowerment program on the differential diagnostic ability of Pressure ulcer in critical care units. Methods: This is a non-randomized clinical trial with two groups of control and intervention. The research population included all nurses working in the critical care units of selected hospitals of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. The sample consisted of 80 nurses (40 nurses Control and 40 nurses in the intervention group) who were selected based on inclusion criteria and available methods. In order to investigate the ability of differential diagnosis of nurses in both groups, a set of photographs (20 photos of quality and standard considering the appropriate distribution of different grades of bed sore) was used and according to the correct or incorrect answer, each person received a certain score (Correct answer for one point and incorrect answer to zero score). The scores of the two groups were compared before and after the implementation of the empowerment program and analyzed using SPSS 20 and Chi-square, Fisher s exact test, independent t-test and dependent t-test. Results: The results of this study showed that there was a significant difference in the ability of differential diagnosis of nurses except the third grade of pressure ulcer in the control and intervention groups before intervention. The t-test showed that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of differential diagnostic ability after intervention in the two groups (P = 0.001). By comparing the mean of the two groups, the mean score of the differential diagnosis of nurses in the intervention group after intervention was significantly higher than the mean scores of differential diagnostic ability of nurses in the control group. Conclusion: Implementation of empowerment program could increase the ability of nurses to detect pressure ulcer degrees and differentiate pressure ulcer with other wounds. However, the empowerment program in this study failed to provide significant assistance to nurses in identifying third grade pressure ulcer and it shows that there is a need for continuous and consistent interventions to increase the diagnostic power and differentiation of nurses.

Keywords:

Empowerment , Visual Differential Diagnosis , Nurse , Critical Care , Pressure Ulcer