Ulcers

Practice Improvement Project


1. Conduct an assessment of the current “state of practice” in the chosen setting in relation to the identified practice project improvement (wound documentation and tracking system).

I work for a small hospital in Silvis, Illinois with approximately 100 beds. After the weekend workshop I decided that our current “state of practice” for wound documentation was not up to par for several reasons. First, it lacked a good comprehensive baseline assessment of ulcers. Instead the nurse plotted the ulcer site on a sketch of a human and wrote the stage of the ulcer. Second, it did not assess multiple parameters; more or less its only description of wound characteristics was size and drainage of the wound. Also the current form had no data on correlation with healing and no sensitivity to changing wound status. Lastly, it did include a space to write the type of treatment used, but it lacked documentation of any other vital interventions th...