Perioperative registered nurses knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and barriers regarding pressure ulcer prevention in perioperative patients.

Background: Hospital acquired pressure ulcers have a detrimental effect on patient quality of life, morbidity, mortality, and cost to the healthcare industry. Little is known about pressure ulcer prevention in perioperative services.

Objectives: The objectives of this study were to describe perioperative registered nurses (RNs) knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and barriers about pressure ulcer prevention and to determine if knowledge and the availability of a pressure ulcer staging tool are predictors of pressure ulcer prevention behavior.

Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive pilot study was conducted. Sixty-two perioperative RNs from 10 acute care hospitals participated.

Results: Perioperative nurses believed carrying out pressure ulcer prevention strategies is essential to nursing practice but only two-thirds reported conducting pressure ulcer risk assessment on all patients and daily assessment on at risk patients. Results indicated a knowledge deficit regarding assessment and prevention of pressure ulcers as performance on the PUKT (72%) fell below the recommended score of 90%. Results of binary logistic regression indicated that knowledge as measured by the PUKT and availability of a pressure ulcer staging tool were statistically significant (p=0.03) predictors of pressure ulcer prevention behavior. The initial model without the predictor variables, indicated an overall success rate of correct predictions of 64% which increase to 73% when the predictor variables were added to the initial model.

Conclusions: Although perioperative nurses believe that pressure ulcer prevention is important, a knowledge deficit exists and there is a need for pressure ulcer prevention education.