Key to successful hospital acquired pressure injury reduction: Leadership support and engagement

Abstract

Most acute care facilities are undergoing a major culture change and transforming into a high reliability organization focused on putting the patient experience first by delivering high quality, safe care. Reducing or eliminating hospital acquired conditions (HAC) fuels many quality improvement (QI) projects and successful reductions are attained when the support is rooted both in senior leadership and at the grassroots level. Yet each HAC requires a unique approach; specifically, pressure injury prevention programs have success with senior leaderships awareness and engagement in the complexities of the clinical and pathologic etiology of pressure injury development. This paper highlights for senior management the following evidence based key elements required for an organization to have a successful pressure injury prevention program: senior leadership engagement, a clinical champion, an interdisciplinary team, unit-based skin champions, nimble processes and access to evidence-based products.