■■ Keeping moving: monitoring the patient’s movement. If
patients are confined to bed, this monitors how often they
change position.
■■ Incontinence: is the patient continent? If not, are their
incontinence pads meeting their needs and not causing
pressure damage themselves? Also, the use of barrier creams
and moisturising creams to maintain the patient’s skin
integrity should be monitored.
■■ Nutrition: a tool that measures the patient’s nutritional status,
such as a MUST score.
SKIN bundles are an assessment tool but they are also very
valuable to care provision because they help to focus individual
actions and ensure that no area is missed. They also ensure that
pressure-area monitoring looks at the patient as a whole, not
just their pressure areas (Whitlock et al, 2011).
SKIN bundles were developed for use in inpatient areas
(originally for use with critical-care patients) and so a version
adapted for use with community patients should be used.