Patient Story - "I think about pressure ulcers every day"

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Stephen Lightbrown was paralysed from the waist down in a sledging accident at the age of 16. He has had to think about bed sores, or pressure ulcers, every minute of each day since.

"Can I wear these jeans?"  "How long can I lie in bed for?" These are the sort of questions he has had to ask himself for the past 15 years.

As soon as he stopped being vigilant about the sores that develop when skin is put under too much pressure, he got an ulcer which meant he had to stay in bed for four weeks.

This experience made him terrified of getting another sore not least because he has not experienced understanding when he has had to go into hospital.

In this video he tells his story to health professionals at a Safety Express conference hosted by NHS South East Coast.

He says he has been unable to get a double mattress because the assumption is that someone who is vulnerable to pressure ulcers will be sleeping by himself.

In the process of trying to get a new mattress, he has had to wait at home for district nurses, some of whom fail to turn up, never imagining he has had to take time off work in order to be there.

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