Wound care professionals need a baseline knowledge of the different types of wounds they encounter. Correctly diagnosing and treating the wound as well as any underlying causes, will give you and the patients you care for the best chance of success.
Types of wounds are classified as either acute or chronic. Let’s first look at acute wounds, which tend to move along the healing continuum normally and usually heal within six-eight weeks.
Wound care is an exciting specialty that requires continuous learning.
With various wound types and multiple wound care products and treatments available, clinicians strive to stay up to date on evidence-based practices to ensure they are providing patients with current standards of care.
Managing pressure injuries is one area of wound care that many wound care professionals encounter regularly, as they are pervasive across the healthcare continuum.
Whether you work in home health, acute care, or long-term care, you should be aware of some key concepts when managing pressure injuries, as explained by Don Wollheim, MD, FAPWCA, WCC, DWC.
The pandemic has brought skin and wound care challenges on many levels. One challenge is that COVID-19 can compromise the skin, leading to wounds that are harder to heal, according to Dianna Dashner, DNP, WCC, CLNC, LLE, senior nurse practitioner at ProMedica Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation.
SARS-CoV-2 infection can cause virus-mediated endothelial dysfunction, which decreases tissue tolerance, authors wrote in a paper published in the summer 2022 issue of AACN Advanced Critical Care.
Dashner said the body’s inflammatory markers remain high long after an infected person’s symptoms go away.
“Inflammation markers actually take one year from the time you’ve been infected to go back to normal. So for patients who have an autoimmune disease or an inflammatory process in their bodies from a condition they already have, their markers are going to be sky high,” said Dashner, who is presenting “COVID’s Impact on the Skin: A Look at What We Know” at the September Wild on Wounds conference in Hollywood, Florida. The conference explores skin and wound care challenges and provides hands-on learning opportunities.
As we shifted from “turning Q 2 hours” for positioning our patients to “individualized positioning based on tissue tolerance,” many clinicians were unsure how best to establish a plan of care.
How do we determine the positioning frequency? What is the pressure injury risk for our patients? How can we quantify risk to drive plan of care for positioning?
The Braden Scale for Predicting Pressure Ulcer/Sore Risk is a great tool to assist with those questions.
Have you ever been confused about the difference between non-weightbearing and offloading?
These wound care terms are often used when referring to the treatment of diabetic and neuropathic ulcers and pressure injuries.
Both can be critical in the successful healing of either type of wound. However, they are not the same thing.
Let’s begin with defining the terms.
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.
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.
Personal protective equipment (PPE) is critical to your safety while caring for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But healthcare workers also should be aware of PPE guidelines to prevent side effects. For example, pressure injuries can occur from wearing the items meant to keep you protected.
Because of the nature of how the virus spreads, those caring for infected patients are required to wear masks in an effort to reduce risk of acquiring the virus.
Working an entire shift in this environment requires wearing a mask almost continually, which has led to the development of tissue damage from moisture and pressure.
NOTE: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and concerns for the health and safety of our attendees, sponsors and instructors, the 2020 Wipeout Wounds Tour is being rescheduled for 2021, with our first sessions scheduled for the spring. To view current dates and information on the 2021 Wipeout Wounds National Conference Tour, please click here.
The National Pressure Injury Advisory Panel (NPIAP) and its partner organizations released the 2019 Clinical Practice Guideline for the prevention and treatment of pressure injuries.
The new NPIAP Guideline consists of a 409-page document. As a wound care clinician, you’ll be expected to integrate these current standards of care and pressure injury guidelines into your practice.
Donna Sardina, MHA, RN, WCC, CWCMS, DWC, OMS, co-founder of the Wound Care Education Institute (WCEI) and the Wild on Wounds (WOW) Conference, shared some highlights of the new guideline that you should know.
The costs of pressure injuries are numerous, but one area of major concern is when their existence results in a lawsuit. These suits typically allege the pressure injury was the result of poor nursing and overall care of the patient and/or resulted in a patient’s death.
Jacqueline Genesio identifies several lawsuits that resulted in significant verdicts in the article “Pressure Ulcers Are Easy Pickings For Lawsuits.”
As she points out, not only can a verdict result in compensatory damages (money paid to compensate the patient for pain and suffering and lost wages, as examples), but also can include punitive damages.
In one 2015 case, Genesio reported an Arizona jury awarded $2.5 million in compensatory damages and $16.7 million in punitive damages to the estate of an 86-year-old woman.
(more…)