Hand Hygiene Tips for Providing Wound Care in Challenging Settings

September 16th, 2020
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hand hygiene

Hand hygiene is nothing new in healthcare. It has become increasingly important throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.  

As a wound care nurse, you know hand hygiene is essential in preventing infections when providing patient care, as we discuss in the blog post “The Case of the Dirty Wound Care Clinic.”

If you provide care outside of the traditional clinical settings, such as a hospital or a wound care clinic, you know how difficult it can be to maintain good hand hygiene. Without running water, gloves or sanitizer, the risk of infection or its spread is evident. 

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Posted in Infection, Wound and skin management, Wound care, Wound care litigation | Comments Off on Hand Hygiene Tips for Providing Wound Care in Challenging Settings

Explore when to use a collagen wound dressing on your patients

September 9th, 2020
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collagen wound dressing

As wound care certified (WCC) clinicians, you should be aware of the types of dressings available to treat patients in your care.

Wound care dressings come in various shapes, sizes and have indications for their use, including collagen wound dressings.

Let’s explore which types of dressings are focused on collagen.

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Posted in Moist wound dressing, Wound and skin management, Wound assessment, Wound care | No Comments »

Wound temperature can affect the wound healing process

September 2nd, 2020
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wound temperature

A patient’s core body temperature must be above 91.4 degrees Fahrenheit and below 107.6 for wound healing to occur.

The loss of moisture from any surface by evaporation is accompanied by cooling of the surface. So, as wound tissues lose moisture, a cooling effect occurs resulting in lower wound temperature.

Even a decrease of only 2 degrees Celsius is sufficient enough to affect the biological healing process of your patients. This is because cells and enzymes function optimally only at normal body temperature.

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Posted in Wound and skin management, Wound assessment, Wound care, Wound care education | No Comments »

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy: Learn the fundamentals in wound care

August 27th, 2020
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hyperbaric oxygen therapy

When you hear the words hyperbaric oxygen, you probably think of a troubled scuba diver with decompression sickness in need of immediate live-saving medical care.

But hyperbaric oxygen therapy — HBOT for short — is also a go-to therapy routinely used in wound care.

To learn the basics about HBOT, we spoke with wound care experts in the U.S. and abroad.

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Posted in Diabetic wound care, Infection, Venous ulcer, Wound and skin management, Wound care | Comments Off on Hyperbaric oxygen therapy: Learn the fundamentals in wound care

Wild on Wounds (WOW) is going virtual this year. Here’s what you can expect

August 20th, 2020
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Wild on Wounds (WOW)

The world has drastically changed with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

One alteration to our daily lives is the practice of avoiding crowds in an effort to slow down the spread and decrease risk of exposure to coronavirus.

So, for everyone’s health and well-being, we’ve moved our popular Wild on Wounds Conference (WOW) to a virtual format this year.

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Posted in Wild on Wounds Conference, Wound and skin management, Wound care education | No Comments »

Nursing documentation in wound care is a key factor in determining liability

August 13th, 2020
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Nursing documentation

The medical record is an essential piece of evidence in any legal case alleging professional negligence against wound care nurses and others.

As you know, one of the purposes of the medical record is to reflect what nursing care was given to the patient. The entries speak to the quality of the care given.

The entries are supplemented by oral testimony at trial of those whose notations are in the medical record. A jury then decides if care was given that meets the standard of care in the situation or if the caregiver failed to meet his or her legal obligation.

The following 2020 legal court decision (Nixon v. The Brookdale Hospital Medical Center, Parkshore Health Care, LLC, Four Seasons Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, and the New York Community Hospital of Brooklyn, Inc.), illustrates the importance of nursing documentation and potential liability for patient injuries and death.

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Posted in Pressure injury, Wound and skin management, Wound care documentation | No Comments »

Decoding foot wounds: Pressure injury vs. diabetic foot ulcer (DFU)

August 5th, 2020
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Foot wounds

How often have you found yourself in the conundrum of deciding whether a wound on the foot of a diabetic patient is a diabetic foot ulcer or a pressure injury? 

Probably more than once. This is a hotly debated issue among wound care clinicians.

In this post, we’ll dissect the facts and provide a clear understanding of how to differentiate the two types of foot wounds.

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Posted in Diabetic wound care, Pressure injury, Wound and skin management, Wound care | No Comments »

TIMERS wound care: Strategies for wound bed preparation

July 29th, 2020
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TIMERS wound care

Whether you’ve been in wound care for many years, or are a newcomer to the field, you have likely heard the terms TIME and maybe TIMERS.

The two words are acronyms pertaining to clinical categories related to comprehensive wound assessment, management and wound bed preparation for hard-to-heal wounds, said Donald Wollheim, MD, FAPWCA, WCC, DWC, a board-certified surgeon of the American Board of Surgery and clinical instructor with the Wound Care Education Institute (WCEI).

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Posted in Wound assessment, Wound care | No Comments »

Ileal conduit care and nurses: A review of evidence-based practice

July 16th, 2020
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ileal conduit

In 2019, researchers in China released an important study on interventions with ileal conduit patients after having undergone surgery for bladder cancer.

It has since proven to be a wonderful resource for all providers who work with ileal conduit patients.

The study began in 2014 with the establishment of a “dedicated team” of ostomy specialists who provided standardized postoperative care.

Its purpose was to undercover the effects of a more involved, systematized program of postoperative care for patients with ileal conduits who were discharged from the hospital.

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Posted in Ostomy | Comments Off on Ileal conduit care and nurses: A review of evidence-based practice

Reduce pressure injuries when prone positioning COVID-19 patients with ARDS

July 9th, 2020
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Prone positioning

As the COVID-19 pandemic endures, there is an increased awareness of the practice of placing patients in prone positioning versus supine positioning.

Prone positioning is important when patients are experiencing acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), which is a risk for those who have the virus.

Prone therapy is not new, however.

“Critical-care nurses have known for many years that prone positioning patients with ARDS results in lower mortality rates and less incidence of lung injury,” said Kathleen M. Vollman, MSN, RN, CCNS, FCCM, FCNS, FAAN, clinical nurse specialist and consultant at Advancing Nursing, LLC.

Prone therapy was a nursing intervention first used personally by Vollman on an ARDS patient in 1981.

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Posted in Pressure injury, Wound care education | Comments Off on Reduce pressure injuries when prone positioning COVID-19 patients with ARDS

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