Action Products

The annual Worldwide Pressure Injury Prevention Day is just around the corner on November 18, 2021.  Let’s not forget that perioperative pressure Injury prevention strategies decrease overall hospital acquired pressure injuries (HAPIs) in the non-reimbursable CMS “never event” category.  Awareness around perioperative pressure injuries and the focus on patient risk identification, including environmental and extrinsic risk factors, is gaining traction within the surgical and medical device community. As a result, skin injury prevention bundles, hospital policies, and safety strategies are being researched and recommended throughout the healthcare industry.

Hospital Acquired Pressure Injuries (HAPI, formally pressure ulcers) can result in a lifetime of pain, suffering and even possibly death for the patient. HAPI rates are reported to the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI) which is the, “Only national, nursing quality measurement program that provides hospitals with unit-level performance comparison reports (NDNQI, 2010b, p. 2). Healthcare leadership can use the information provided by the NDNQI to establish organizational goals for improvement at the unit level and mark progress in improving patient care and the work environment.

“The primary function of a gerontology nurse is to collaborate with patients, the local community and families in order to deliver the highest possible quality of life to the elderly,” explains bestmasterofscienceinnursing.com, naming five specific characteristics needed for nurses to succeed in the field of gerontology, including:

• patience
• compassion
• attention to detail
• creativeness
• consistency

Managing heat and humidity in the summer is a priority for everyone; for older adult home healthcare patients, it’s a lifesaving necessity.

Every summer, healthinaging.org reports, nearly 200 Americans die of health problems caused by high heat and humidity; most are age 50 or older. Hot weather is more likely to cause health problems for older adults, the authors explain, for a variety of reasons, including:

• age-related body changes
• chronic health conditions
• side effects of medications

When researchers at the Future of Nursing Campaign for Action discovered large gaps between what academia thought training nurses needed and what would actually be expected of those nurses in their first nursing positions, one issue had to do with language. At Action Products, we take great pride in our ongoing role in working with nurses, we were fascinated by the National Institute of Aging’s tutorial on effective communication with elder patients.

From a general point of view, the authors explain, what was once called "bedside manner" is becoming the subject of many empirical studies, the results of which point to the fact that effective communication with patients:

• helps prevent medical errors
• leads to improved health outcomes
• uses limited interaction time more efficiently