Pressure ulcer dressing in community placement Essay

Pressure ulcer dressing in community placement - Essay Example The researcher will begin with the statement that throughout his community placement practice, he has particularly dealt with pressure ulcers on a frequent basis than many other forms of injuries. Apparently, the author never thought that they could be a serious issue as they turned out and I had to perform extensive research and on them. In clinical practice, pressure ulcers or decubitus ulcers can be described as damage affecting the skin and the tissues beneath, as occasioned by three main factors. The contributing factors to pressure ulcers are; pressure, shear, and friction. In all community placement encounters dealing with pressure ulcers, the author has found out that the most useful way of identifying pressure ulcers is the skin discoloration. This class of ulcers ranged from skin discoloration in slight damages to broken skin with open wounds in extreme cases. The researcher has found out also that the level of damage could be gauged in some instances on the state of the ph ysical appearance of the skin, before assessing the underlying tissues damage. Research findings enabled the author to apply better practices such as ensuring that the wounds remained moist unlike before where they were macerated and gave poor results. For healing of pressure wounds to occur, infections and sloughing were minimised by ensuring that the wound environment remained in a conducive. The temperature was to be maintained at an optimum and that the pH maintained was optimum for wound healing as noted by Baranoski and Ayello.