Calculating the risk: reflections on the Norton Scale. 1989
Norton, D.; Norton, D.
Advances in Wound Care the Journal for Prevention and Healing 9(6): 38-43
1996
ISSN/ISBN: 1076-2191 PMID: 9069755 Document Number: 6279
In view of the many great changes that have taken place since our studies, together with some feedback from use of the Norton Scale in the past few years, I am now convinced that its score of 14 no longer should be regarded as the onset of pressure ulcer risk. I now put the risk score at 15 or even 16. When I announced this updating in October 1987,9 it was inappropriately reported in one of our nursing journals, and already this error has been confounded by repetition. One writer10 has gone so far as to say, "Doreen Norton has recently conceded the deficiencies in her original calculations." I deny this absolutely, and hope I have shown that the original calculations were based on sound evidence. Unfortunately, once incorrect things are in print, they cannot be erased and fossilize into tablets of stone. In this instance, it could turn out to be a tombstone for the Norton Scale. If so, a fitting memorial might be what was said of the research that gave it birth. The Lancet (August 25, 1962) wrote of our report "...posterity might well say it did as much to change the pattern of nursing in this century as Florence Nightingale's 'Notes on Nursing' did in the last."
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