Soins palliatifs et médecine

Abstrait

Patients in Palliative Care with Pressure Ulcers Require Vigilant Pain Management

Carrie Sussman

According to findings from studies of patients with pressure ulcers (PU), PU pain is significant. Health care professional (HCP) awareness of PU pain has been growing over the last 15 years but still lacks enough attention at all levels from basic education to advanced clinical practice across disciplines. Pressure ulcers must be appropriately diagnosed as a pressure ulcer and then graded for severity into a stage/category of severity and for pain acuity and chronicity. The purposes of this article are (1) to present validated and reliable tools for measurement of pressure ulcer pain (PU), identify causative factors of PU pain and strategies to alleviate PU pain (2) to provide information that can be incorporated into a framework for health care professionals to use in development of policies and procedures for care of patients with pressure ulcers.