Clinical Resources
Below are a series of links to valuable resources that can help your nursing home put processes in place to reduce pressure ulcer rates and restraint use. Many of these resources have been produced by the national Advancing Excellence in America's Nursing Homes campaign. The campaign, of which IPRO is a partner, works to help nursing homes achieve excellence in the quality of care and quality of life for the more than 1.5 million residents of America's nursing homes.
Please feel free to contact IPRO (see contact information at the right) if you have questions about how to employ any of these resources.
Reducing the Incidence of Pressure Ulcers
The Advancing Excellence campaign's Implementation Guide for Reducing High Risk Pressure Ulcers provides efficient, consistent, evidence-based approaches to address the prevention and minimization of pressure ulcers.
Advancing Excellence also offers an Admitted vs. Acquired Pressure Ulcer Tracking Tool. This tool helps nursing homes track pressure ulcers that are admitted from another setting or acquired in-house from August 2011 - July 2012.
Advancing Excellence conducted a presentation on using the Pressure Ulcer Tool, available in both WebEx presentation format and as a transcript.
Access the Braden Scale for determining pressure ulcer risk.
A fact sheet for nursing home staff emphasizing the importance of reducing the incidence of pressure ulcers includes both great information on the topic and additional tools and resources to explore.
Reducing the Use of Restraints
The Advancing Excellence Implementation Guide provides efficient, consistent, evidence-based approaches to address inappropriate use of restraints in nursing homes.
A template developed by Advancing Excellence is an easy-to-use mechanism for tracking and monitoring residents with physical restraints on a weekly basis.
Download and review a physical restraint use decision chart, which can help determine if an individual patient should have their restraints removed.
In 2007, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued this Survey and Certification memo explaining the terms associated with its goal of reducing unnecessary restraint use.
Advancing Excellence produced a webinar on reducing restraint use in the form of a PPT presentation (also available as PDF) and audio file.
A fact sheet on reducing the use of restraints designed for nursing home staff contains valuable information as well as links to a variety of tools and additional resources.
