Nursing time required to manage and treat leg ulcers is the main cost driver in the UK, where patients with leg ulcers often make up a large proportion of community nursing caseloads.
In Site 2 102 patients were identified from the community nursing caseloads and assessed as having a Grade ≥1 pressure ulcer, a prevalence rate of 0.40 per 1000 ((102/251891)*1000 adults).
Patients over 18 years old and on community nursing caseloads were eligible to be asked the two pain questions when they had a PU assessed as a Grade 1,2,3,4 or Unstagable [ 28] and were considered well and able to report the presence or absence of localised pain.
A cross-sectional survey was performed of community nurses caseloads to identify adult patients with pressure ulcers and associated pain.
Participants were recruited from leg ulcer clinics, community nurse caseloads, hospital wards, and hospital outpatient departments (for example, dermatology or surgery).
The primary limitation was the fact that patients and HCPs were recruited independently and not matched; thus, it is possible that the patient respondents had a more severe disease profile compared with patients included in physicians' and nurses' caseloads.
For both the development and evaluation phases, stroke survivor participants were identified from stroke nursing team caseloads and were recruited via an initial advertisement sent out by stroke nursing teams.
Variables collected include the service capacity of the provider (number of beds, number of medical devices with a purchase price over 10 thousand Yuan and total asset value), the number of staff members (physicians, nurses, technicians), caseload (annual number of visits, annual number of discharges) and the annual financial figures (the total revenue and average salary).
Features that distinguish nurse-led clinics include the nurse having their own patient caseload, an increase in autonomy of the nursing role, and the ability to admit and discharge patients from the clinic or to refer to other clinical colleagues.
