WGU C493 Leadership and Professional Image – Task 1 2020

Western Governors University C493 Leadership and Professional Image – Task 1 2020 A. Develop a written proposal by doing the following: 1. Identify a problem or issue you seek to solve and explain why it is applicable to the healthcare environment. Moisture associated contact dermatitis (MACD) is an issue I would like to address and help solve. MACD causes the patient to be uncomfortable and suffer. It is highly preventable if the nursing staff is vigilant and it is also easily treated. On our unit, we often have a lot of patients that cannot get out of bed to use the facilities to void or defecate. Often, these patients are incontinent and do not realize it so they sit in their soiled brief for long periods of time. On a good day, we are able to round every hour and check for incontinence but in reality this is sometimes not possible as other emergent things are happening. So for patients that cannot feel they have voided or defecated, they may sit there for prolonged periods of time and the brief is holding this moisture on their skin, causing the skin to breakdown over time. There are of course other factors that lead to poor skin integrity like nutrition status, hydration, and mobility. I want to focus on using the correct products to prevent those bound to bed from developing MACD. 2. Discuss your investigation of the problem or issue. I have worked at my hospital for four years now and I have seen incontinence associated dermatitis (IAD) develop quickly on bedridden patients. Usually I have the same patient for three days straight and I can see the skin breakdown that happens and it happens quickly. I have also seen the skin begin to heal within a day or two by implementing these simple strategies and being vigilant with incontinent care. Sadly, I have also seen people do well under my care only to come back a day or two later and see their skin issues have worsened because lack of care. It is a systems fault I believe as we often are short-handed with aids and nurses. We are given heavy loads of patients and we simply cannot be everywhere at the same time. Nurses strive to do best by every patient but incontinent care sometimes gets put to the back of our minds especially if other patients have serious medical issues needing to be addressed in the moment. 3. Analyze the state of the situation using current data and analyze areas that might be contributing to the problem or issue. One of the most common skin issues is IAD in patients who are incontinent of bowel and or bladder (Beeckman et all, 2016). According to Beeckman et all (2016) the prevalence of IAD is anywhere between 5.6%050% and the incidence of IAD is anywhere between 3.4% and 25%. This means it is a very common problem. Contributing factors include the incontinent pads that are used under