Medline Invited Speaker: Top 10 Tips for Healing Wounds

Wendy was in Canberra last week as an Invited Speaker for Medline Australia. The topic was the Top 10 Tips for Healing Wounds. Here’s her recap on what was a very enjoyable evening:

On what had been a beautiful clear, sunny day, over 50 health care professionals made their way after busy working days to attend this CPD session. There were groups from aboriginal primary health, acute, community and palliative to name just a few. Nurses with a wide range of experiences and wound/stomal management clinical focus were represented, and all attendees were enthusiastic, friendly and welcoming.

I caught up with ‘old’ (long time!) friends and colleagues, and enjoyed making new connections whilst listening to some of the great work that is happening in the area.

During the evening we heard that a facilities new wound care group is to meet for the first time later in the week. We also heard about the development of a new Advanced Practice role in Plastics where wound management is a focus.

We met clinicians who had completed and sang the praises for the 6-month Tissue Viability Placement Program. Ann Marie Dunk (CNC Wound Management) was and is the driving force behind the Program inception and continuation. Nurses who had or were working with Judith Barker (Nurse Practitioner Wound Management) in the community came up and chatted about their experiences being supported by such encouraging and supporting wound experts.

A repeating message they gave me was the positive benefits of not only these opportunities, but the collaboration between acute and community providers to enhance learning experiences and improve outcomes.

During the evening we had the opportunity to publicly acknowledge another local clinician, Bunny Upathumpa’s achievement as she awaits her endorsement as a Diabetes Nurse Practitioner – great news!

Another bonus of the evening was that Fleur Trezise who is not a local was also in town. Fleur is a Nurse Practitioner Wound Management and had been in Canberra in her role of Nurse Advisor Wound Management with the Department of Veteran Affairs.

All of the Top 10 Tips discussed on the evening were applicable to any provider of wound care and here are just a few:

PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE.

FEED THE BODY: Prevent or heal a wound – considering nutritional status sooner vs later, to screen, monitor over time and refer to team to individualise care planning.

PROVIDING CARE WITH PURPOSE: Know expected clinical outcome; a correct diagnosis based on comprehensive and systematic data collection that is respectful and includes their voice, will guide care planning to prevent, heal and manage wounds.

BE METICULOUS: Near enough is not good enough. Every action and every inaction carries a consequence or risk to healing. Our hand hygiene practices, cleansing dressing procedure standards, accuracy in measuring and monitoring clinimetrics are examples of where we can positively or negatively impact.

CHRONIC WOUNDS ARE INFECTED WOUNDS: It really is time (nearly 10 years since proposed by Wolcott et al 2010) to reflect on every dressing change procedure and ask, “Are we providing Biofilm Based Wound Care as a multimodal principal to cleansing debridement antiseptic/microbial management and antibiotic stewardship, and if not, why not?”

It was a terrific night all round – connecting and talking wounds is what we love to do!

A big thanks to Margie and Cath for bringing this event together.

Photos used with permission.