A study on the assessment of pressure sores

Executive Summary. This paper is concerned with the assessment of pressure sore development, specifically among geriatric patients. The proper prevention of pressure sore development relies heavily on the proper assessment of the patient. At present, preventive and curative actions are employed by medical practitioners. However, the preventive actions are employed without any basis at all since they do not use any tool for assessing pressure sore development. Curative actions are done only upon detection of the symptoms of pressure sores. In providing an assessment tool, it should be very accurate to predict the assessment of pressure sores. Medical practitioners, specifically members of the St. Luke\u27s Geriatric Department do not use any risk assessment tool for pressure sore development. The reason why they do not use any existing assessment tool is due to its inaccuracy. This study then aims to focus on one existing assessment tool, the Braden scale and investigate its accuracy on selected samples of the home-care program of St. Luke\u27s Medical Center. Each factor included in the Braden scale would be tested for significance in the development of pressure sores. Also, factors other than those included in the Braden scale would also be tested for significance in the development of pressure sores. The study revealed that two more additional factors, incontinence and body mass index, should be considered in assessing patients for pressure sore development. It came out that the proposed assessment tool has an overall accuracy of 91.11% compared to that of the Braden scale of 75.75.% The increase in the overall accuracy was proven to be significant