Assessment of pressure ulcer risk by ambulance staff in the pre-hospital setting

Pressure ulcers (PU) occur across a range of healthcare settings and have a significant impact on patients’ quality of life, and can result in prolonged hospital stays (Wood et al, 2019). Frontline ambulance staff, including emergency care assistants, technicians and paramedics, attend a large numbers of patients at risk of developing a PU. However, there is little research published on their role in PU identification, risk assessment, or PU prevention for those patients who are left at home following an ambulance attendance. This article will analyse three PU risk assessment tools and will attempt to determine which one might be appropriate for use by ambulance staff when attending patients in the pre-hospital setting.