Pressure Injuries

In the hospital, patients are sometimes unable to move as they normally would. Sometimes they are connected to equipment that can prevent them from moving, or they may be very sick or too weak to move on their own. When they move less and spend a lot of time in bed, this can lead to injuries to the skin known as pressure injuries, or bed sores. The weight of the body creates pressure between the skin and the bed which can cause damage to some parts of the skin.

There are different causes for pressure injuries, including:

  • Reduced activity – sitting or lying in the one place for too long
  • Pressure or friction to one area of the body
  • Reduced feeling in the skin

At Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, teams across the organization work together to prevent patients from getting skin injuries during hospital stays. These team members include our Wound, Ostomy and Continence Nurse team and trained “Skin Champions” from every inpatient unit.

How Do We Prevent Pressure Injuries?

There are different ways to reduce the risk of pressure injuries for our patients. We check each patient’s skin often to find problems early and prevent them from getting worse.

We also rotate medical devices, and reposition and turn patients regularly before injuries can develop.

How Are We Doing?

Our team is dedicated to making sure that patients don’t develop skin injuries in the hospital.  We keep track of how we are doing with the number of pressure injuries we have throughout the year. The graph below shows our pressure injury rate, which means the number of hospital-onset pressure injuries we observed for every 1,000 days that patients were hospitalized at CHLA.

A line graph detailing the biannual pressure injury rate at CHLA. For every 1,000 days that patients were hospitalized at CHLA, hospital-onset pressure injuries were observed 0.12 times in Q1-Q2 of 2023; 0.07 times in Q3-Q4 of 2023; and 0.10 times in Q1-Q2 of 2024.

What You Can Do to Help

Patients and families are an important part of the care team. They play a role in lowering the risk of pressure injuries. Please speak up and let the nurse know if:

  • Your child has pain or discomfort in the position they are in.
  • There is any discoloration (color that is not normal) of the skin.
  • The skin has any abnormalities (does not appear normal).