We were proud to support the Tissue Viability Team at the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust last week who successfully kicked off a brand new pressure ulcer prevention campaign at New Cross Hospital.
The ‘Help Our Heels’ campaign is designed to raise awareness amongst patients, family members and healthcare professionals of the importance of reacting to risk. The supporting materials such as ward posters seek to permanently highlight the simple preventative steps that anyone can take when they see a patient at risk of developing a heel pressure ulcer:
- Elevate the heels to offload pressure
- Add heel boots
- Profile the patient’s bed to offload pressure
- Moisturise dry skin
The importance of taking these steps as soon as a patient is deemed to be at risk is absolutely key to reducing avoidable heel pressure ulcers.
The team, led by Lorraine Jones (Tissue Viability Lead Nurse) and Usha Sharma (Tissue Viability Speciality Nurse), set up attention grabbing stands in busy locations across three key sites – New Cross Hospital, West Park and Cannock Community Hospitals. As well as answering questions and educating visitors to the stand on the importance of reacting to risk, the team also visited wards to talk to nursing teams, distribute supporting posters and special heel check mirrors.
Well done to all the team at Wolverhampton for the attention grabbing theme and great start to the campaign.