Joint EPUAP & EWMA Pressure Ulcer prevention & patient safety advocacy project
Project period: 2016–2019
The European Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel (EPUAP) and EWMA are collaborating on a joint engagement in the PU prevention and patient safety agendas at the European level targeting EU institutions including the European Parliament as well as other key stakeholders.
Patient safety has for some years been high on the European Commission health care agenda. At the EU level as well as at national levels of many European nations, considerable investments have been made by health care authorities to establish organisations and programmes addressing the patient safety agenda.
Looking at the patient safety agenda from a wound care perspective, the topic of Pressure Ulcer (PU) prevention has always been central due to the fact that most PU’s are preventable if the patient is managed correctly by health care staff.
Consequently both EPUAP and EWMA have separately been advocating for the prevention of PU’s as a major health care and patient safety issue. Whereas EPUAP, in particular, has strongly supported the annual STOP Pressure Ulcer campaign, EWMA has in collaboration with the Eucomed Advanced Wound Care Sector group earlier engaged in raising attention in the European Parliament and the European Commission in connection with the EU Joint Action on Patient Safety and Quality of Care (PaSQ) programme.
European Parliament: EWMA & EPUAP Roundtable debate on patient safety and wound care in Europe
On 7 November 2019, European Wound Management Association (EWMA) & the European Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel (EPUAP), will organise a roundtable debate on patient safety and wound care in Europe: “10 years after the Council recommendation on patient safe.
Learn more
Pressure ulcers and patient safety fact sheet
Download the fact sheet on pressure ulcers and patient safety here.
Publications by the Joint EPUAP-EWMA project
Seven articles by the joint EPUAP-EWMA initiative have now been published. The articles are available for download here:
Disability in Europe: The invisible burden of pressure ulcers
Pressure ulcer monitoring: a process of evidence-based practice, data sharing and joint efforts
The role of pressure ulcer prevention in the fight against antimicrobial resistance
EWMA & EPUAP added-value to OECD efforts
Diabetic Control & Pressure Ulcers: fighting fatal complications and
improving quality of life
Patient safety across Europe: the perspective of pressure ulcers.
The time to invest in patient safety and pressure ulcer prevention is now!
Activities
- Achivements and lessons learned published in the Journal of EWMA, October 2019
- "Pressure ulcer prevalence, what does the European data tell us": An epidemiology overview based on existing European prevalence data is in progress, developed by Professor zena Moore and her team and accepted for publication in the Journal of Wound Care in December 2019.
- Consecutive meetings between Professor Lisette Schoonhoven and the chair of OECD Health Care Quality Indicators expert group since November 2016.
- Meetings between the project group and selected representatives of the European Commission and Members of the European Parliament, to raise awareness and call for preventive action against the development of PUs in particular.
- Case study video presenting the experience and reflections about PUs of Mr Vašíček who has been wheelchair bond for more than three decades.
- Regular publication and dissemination of information and articles about patient safety and PU prevention.
- Joint presentations at the annual conferences of EWMA and EPUAP. The first of these took place at the EWMA Amsterdam conference 3-5 May 2017. Presentations can be found here.
