In this segment we’ll be looking at staging of pressure injuries. What we see here is a stage 1 pressure injuries according to the ‘National Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel Guidelines’. The purpose of staging guidelines is to give us an indication as to the depth of tissue damage. There are 4 stages of pressure injuries, stage 1 being the least severe and stage 4 being the most severe. Then there are those two sub categories, being unstageable and suspected deep tissue damage. So in this scenario here we have a stage 1 pressure injury.
A stage 1 pressure injury appears as a defined area of persistent redness in lightly pigmented skin or persistent red, blue or purple hues in darker skin tones. Alterations in the skin may include changes in the skin temperature (the temperature of the skin compared to adjacent skin), or tissue consistency, it may have a firm or boggy feel as compared to adjacent skin. So this area here, when we push on the skin it has a persistent area of redness or non-blanchable erythema.
Promoting Healthy Skin - Video Transcript