The Norton score: an early warning of pressure sores?

Abstract

This paper investigates the predictive power of the Norton score in the problem of anticipating pressure lesions, and looks at some variants on that score. The Norton score is now nearly 20 years old but is still not in frequent use by nurses, and has been the subject of little research, especially in its predictive ability. By following the progress of two matched samples over a 15-month period in a district general hospital it is established that the Norton score does perform at least as well as a number of reasonable variants of it, and that in particular the physical score and incontinence score are the crucial elements. A follow-up sample in which the variants are retested confirms the usefulness of the Norton score.