Individuals living with an ostomy face many challenges in maintaining peristomal skin health. One of the main ones being different perceptions of skin health between patients and nurses. There is also widespread variation in the terminology used between healthcare professionals, leading to inconsistencies in approach. These inconsistencies can affect care quality, patient outcomes and perpetuate ritualistic practices that compromise skin health. This can lead to confusion and demotivate patients and practitioners alike. By identifying some of these problems, and exploring the evidence we can develop workable solutions to ultimately improve the quality of care offered and finally address the burden of peristomal skin complications.
Living with a stoma can be problematic in many ways, but quality of life can be greatly compromised if there are peristomal skin issues that result in the leakage of a stoma appliance. With improvement in stoma products it could be assumed that skin issues would no longer occur but this is not the case. Skin issues are one of the most common problems reported to the specialist stoma care nurse. The many risk factors for skin complications offer an insight into why problems continue and why nurses need to be proactive, vigilant and address problems when they occur. This session will aim to explore the extent of skin complications within the UK so that nurses are in a better position to address and resolve them.
10:30 AM -
11:00 AM
This session will examine the current state of practice surrounding the assessment and documentation of peristomal skin health. It will look at whether the language and tools that we use at the moment accurately reflect the complexity of the problems that we see and reflect our skills and expertise as Nurse Specialists. It will draw on the experiences of other areas to see if there are similar experiences and what progress has been made. It will also look forward to see what direction and shape future practice could take in order to make a positive impact on how we could communicate with our patients and each other more effectively in the future.
12:00 PM -
1:00 PM
This session aims to contextualise a range of factors that impact on someone’s psycho-social reaction to peristomal skin complications. With this enhanced understanding, the session will highlight theories and suggestions for enhancing people’s coping and wellbeing.
1:30 PM -
2:30 PM
Expert Skin Health Panel Q&A
2:30 PM -
3:00 PM
