Patients in hospital beds and nursing homes are rotated every 2 hours to prevent bedsores. Explain why?

To minimize the contact of various body parts with the surface of the bed. Continuous contact in one area causes friction and pressure which results in the breakdown of tissue and ulceration.

Patients who cannot move themselves (like those in comas, the elderly or those with severe injuries) must be rotated every two hours, as if they are left for long periods of time, bedsores (or pressure sores) can form. They're both painful and troublesome to treat - If you can imagine, they form where there is most pressure.. Which is generally underneath someone. If that someone is in a coma, that spot is very hard to get to. So, orderlies and nurses turn patients every couple of hours to prevent this. It also helps prevents clotting and conditions like deep vein thrombosis (DVT), which can form if someone is left in the same position for too long. DVT is sometimes common among international flight passengers. DVT can be fatal, as can clots.

Because when someone is bedridden (or stays in the bed quite a bit during the day), it also stands to reason that they can't move around very well in the bed. As a result, they lie in one position until someone comes to assist them to move. If you lie in the same position for hours or days upon end, you will develop, at first, red spots where pressure points are located. For example, if you lie on your back for an extended period and don't move or shift your weight around, you will develop a reddened area at the sacrum (the bone at the bottom of your spinal column) because it is one point where the weight of your body comes into contact with the bed. If you continue to lie there, circulation will continue to be compromised in that area and eventually the skin will break down, a bed sore can develop and can continue to get worse unless treated. Other pressure points include the heels and ankle bones, where bed sores can develop. Patients are moved every 2 hours as a general rule in order to prevent bedsores from developing and to enhance circulation.

Lie on a hard floor for ten minutes and notice the bits of your body that get sore! This is because those areas are quite bony and the weight of your body is pressing the bone against the skin, stopping blood flow to that area. Without a blood supply, the skin starts to die, which results first in sore areas and eventually in skin breakdown where whole areas of skin develop ulcers of dead tissue that can then spread as deep as the muscles and bone. People with pressure ulcers experience extreme pain and can develop infections which can spread to the blood and in some cases kill them. I had a patient who died as a result of a pressure ulcer caused by the lack of basic care he received in a nursing home. Most ulcers can take months or even years to heal and require high doses of morphine to help the patient cope. They are not pretty!