Clinical Governance and Pressure Ulcer Treatment

Running head: PRESSURE ULCER
PRESSURE ULCER
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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PRESSURE ULCER
The clinical governance is an important aspect that nursing professionals need to develop in order
to ensure safe and quality care to patient by constant development of skills and knowledge associated
with care (altman, 2019). This assignment will help to show how clinical governance can help nursing
professionals to develop their expertise and provide evidence based care for pressure ulcer treatment.
During the time of placement, I got the opportunity of caring for an old patient who had been
admitted to the ward after a fracture in his knees. He was a diabetic patient and was obese with a BMI of
32. He was found to have unmanaged levels of glucose in blood. His family members stated that he used
to often forget medications of sometimes takes medication twice forgetting that he had already taken them
earlier. The patient had undergone a similar situation where after having lunch, he had taken medication
twice and as a result his glucose level in blood was much below the optimal level making him suffer from
hypoglycemia. As a result he had faced a blackout and fallen in his garden that had made him suffer
fracture in his knees. He was immediately taken to the emergency department and sufficient nursing
interventions were taken to help him come out of danger. He was then shifted to the medical-surgical
ward for further monitoring and care of his present situation. The patient was allocated under the
supervision of nursing professional. The nurse was novice and as per her knowledge and skills she had
provided proper medication and took good quality care of the patient. The patient did not want to move
because of the pain he felt in his knee and the nurse avoided any interventions that make the patient feel
hurt. She wanted to ensure that none of her interventions cause any pain and suffering of the patient.
However, two days later, she all of a sudden recognized that the patient had developed pressure ulcers but
instead of taking specific interventions, she washed the wounds and applied absorbent powder and anti-
microbial ointments for healing of wounds. However, the mentor of the novice nurse attended the ward
three days later and witnessed that the patient had developed pressure ulcer on his hip region as well as on
back of his heel and completely wrong treatment was conducted by the nurse. The patient started
suffering from pain and the care by the novice nurse was questioned as she had not taken care of the
patient in proper ways. She had not undertaken any measures for risk assessment of pressure ulcer and

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PRESSURE ULCER
also wrong interventions were taken. The nurse was asked for show-cause which affected her confidence
and she felt guilty for it. She was completely unaware of pressure ulcer risk management and
interventions and did not know how to assess the risks successfully.
Clinical governance is the way by which NHS is seen to work for the improvement of the quality
of care of the patients and thereby ensure high quality care, patient safety and patient satisfaction. Clinical
governance is mainly about ensuring that patients are able to get the right type of care at the right time
and from the right person (Van et al., 2018). This is considered to be the responsibility of every member
of staffs that include nurses, doctors, radiographers, physiotherapists, cleaners, laboratory staffs and even
administration staffs. All healthcare stakeholders need to work together in a collaborative manner for
ensuring that the patients are receiving the best possible care (Galloway, 2018). The nurse who was
caring for the patient, had failed to provide the right-quality care at the right time to the patient. Hence the
patient had been exposed to development of pressure ulcers. Therefore, clinical governance was not
maintained by the nursing professionals for whom the patient had to suffer massively.
One of the main components of clinical governance is called the risk management. Risk
management is mainly conducted by nursing professionals to minimize the risks to patients by following
specific steps (Walshe et al., 2017). The nurses need to identify what can and might go wrong during care
and then understand the factors that can influence the problematic situation. Nurses need to learn from the
lessons from the adverse events and ensure that actions are taken for the prevention of the recurrence
(Wilkinson et al., 2015)). They should also put the systems in place for the reduction of risks.
Different policies in NHS that had been published on pressure ulcers had talked about the
importance of effective risk management for patients so as to reduce the chances of developing pressure
ulcers. Pressure ulcers are seen to result of the direct pressure exerted vertically over a given area of the
body. However, studies have suggested that some patients are more vulnerable in development of the
pressure ulcers because of the recognized risk factors (Donaldson, 2018). Researchers have found out