We are committed to the prevention and treatment of tissue damage in Scotland. NHS Quality Improvement Scotland (NHS QIS) owns and maintains this website. We promote the use of knowledge to improve practice. Our best practice statements help healthcare providers improve their everyday patient/client care.

Use this toolkit to help lead the prevention of pressure ulcers

The model of improvement can help you make reliable and sustainable changes to your everyday practice. Staff in hospitals and care homes can use these tools in their workplace. Each tool can be printed and saved, shared and bookmarked.

My clipboard is an easy way to gather the tools you need.

Tissue viability explained

Good care begins with the prevention of skin damage.

Tissue Viability focuses on all aspects of skin and soft tissue wounds including:

• acute surgical wounds
• pressure ulcers
• leg ulceration

For now, the services we provide focus on supporting your treatment and prevention of pressure ulcers. Pressure ulcers can be distressing for your patient or client and can affect their quality of life. They can also have cost implications for your organisation.

The integrated programme for tissue viablity explained

This practice development resource was requested by the Scottish Government Health Directorate in May 2008. It is designed to help clinicians improve their care in the area of tissue viability.

A programme board to oversee the work was established by the Scottish Government and a steering group appointed to undertake the work. This work was led by a Programme Manager based at NHS Quality Improvement Scotland. An education resource, which you can also access through this website, was developed by NHS Educaton for Scotland.

The programme specified particular pieces of work, such as:

• the development of a national pressure ulcer grading tool
• a national prevalence methodology
• and an educational framework and workbook.

In order to integrate these elements and ensure they are widely available across the health and social care sectors in Scotland, this web-based resource was considered the best approach.

In order to extend the value of this website, further work will consider risk assessment.