Effect of Intensive Care Unit Nurses' Empowerment Program on Ability in Visual Differential Diagnosis of Pressure Ulcer Classification.

Nurses play a vital role in preventing and detecting pressure ulcers within an intensive care unit. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of an empowerment program on nurses' ability to visually determine the stage of a pressure ulcer. This study was a nonrandomized clinical trial involving an intervention group and a control group. Prior to the empowerment program, data indicated that there was a significant deficit in the ability of nurses in both groups to accurately determine the stage of a pressure ulcer. Following the empowerment program, the mean scores of nurses in the intervention group were significantly higher than the mean score of nurses in the control group (P ≤ .001). This study indicates that the implementation of an empowerment program can increase the ability of nurses to detect pressure ulcers and to accurately determine staging.