Pressure injuries (PI), also known as pressure ulcers, increase the cost of health- care (Lim & Ang, 2017; Nguyen, Chaboyer & Whitty, 2015), impact on patient quality of life, and cause significant patient harm, pain (Jackson et al., 2017) and even death (Padula & Pronovost, 2018).International guidelines indicate that PI preventative interventions should be implemented to mitigate PI risk according to risk level (NPUAP et al., 2014). The importance of appropriate body positioning and repositioning as a PI prevention strategy cannot be overstated (Jackson et al., 2017; Miles et al., 2013b). Following patient risk assessment, planning of PI prevention strategies is undertaken, which includes planning for timely repositioning of immobile patients (NPUAP et al., 2014). There is no clear guideline for how often to reposition patients (Miles et al., 2013b), with the generally accepted timeframe being two hours, since PI can occur within as little as two hours (Van Rijswijk & Lyder, 2008). There is minimal research regarding the effectiveness of repositioning (Miles et al., 2013b), but it is generally accepted as an important strategy that continues to contribute to decreasing PI prevalence (Miles et al., 2013b). There is limited evidence of how often repositioning occurs in a hospital setting, and whether most patients contribute to their own self-repositioning or if nurses undertake most repositioning interventions.
Project aim: The aim of this study is to identify and analyse patient body positioning and repositioning when lying in a hospital bed using a thermal imaging device designed to recognise body position, monitor and store patient position changes and dynamically measure accumulated pressure time for each individual bony prominence.
Prof Paul Fulbrook, Dr Sandra Miles, Josephine Lovegrove paul.fulbrook@acu.edu.au