About Wendy White

Wendy is an Independent Consultant, qualified Educator, Advanced Practice Nurse & Credentialed Wound Specialist (Wendy White WoundCare) based in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. She has over 30 years of experience in the specialty with past clinical & educational roles of lead -senior nurse in two of the early ‘wound clinics’ established in Melbourne, Victoria and Nurse Consultant roles in chronic wound research projects and interdisciplinary chronic wound services.

Her skin & wound specialty experiences are wide and varied, including wound consultancy, education and course advisory roles with the Wound Foundation of Australia and Monash University and supporting Industry with Clinical Consultancy & Educator roles throughout the South Pacific region.

In 2012, Wendy developed a specialty wound service working in collaboration with GPs in the primary health care setting. For the next 4 years, she provided weekly onsite, advanced practice services inclusive of low frequency ultrasound debridement. Wendy expanded her professional services by offering independent private consultancy and procedural rooms from 2016 – 2018.

EDUCATOR / INVITED SPEAKER

She is a respected invited speaker, educator and workshop facilitator and presents at regional, state, national and international wound conferences, symposiums, seminars and educational sessions. She delivers educational webinars and on demand events on a wide range of topics.

In 2014 she piloted an online, live or on demand educational initiative called ‘WOUNDjuice’ providing convenient and accessible CPD opportunities, through a variety of devices including laptops, smart phones and tablets. The educational opportunities and resources offered continue to be developed and refined to meet the needs of clinicians and facilities. The Wounded Learning Centre online platform continues to evolve so continue to ‘watch this space.’

CLINICAL CONSULTANCY

Clinical consultancy is currently provided for organisational partners based on service agreements. Wendy continues to advocate for compliant forms of communication based on current government privacy requirements. In 2018 she has invested in building her team and providing access to technology to meet the growing demands and continue to improve service provision.

SUPPORT / CONSULTANCY

Wendy continues to provide organisational support (in a variety of healthcare, residential settings) as an invited expert to review current practices, policy / procedure and skin & wound care formularies. Safe quality care provision that is comprehensive, person focused, systematic, consistent, effective and efficient is promoted. Maintaining skin health, wound prevention, symptom control and optimising outcomes / measuring outcomes for healable and non-healable wound types is emphasised.

PROFESSIONAL RECOGNITION & SERVICE

Wendy is a recipient of an Wounds Australia (Previously Australian Wound Management Association – AWMA) Fellowship in recognition of her contribution to clinical practice, education, research and leadership in wound management throughout Australia, and the Asia Pacific region.

Wendy is a past President of the Wound Management Association of Victoria and a past Vice President of the Australian Wound Management Association NSW. She has served on the National AWMA Education subcommittee for several years and was Chair of Scientific Program Committee for the 9th National AWMA Conference held in Sydney, 2012.

INVITED EXPERT

Wendy is an invited expert on local committees and advisory groups including the Johanna Briggs Institute Wound Healing and Management (WHAM) Node Expert Reference Group & Corresponding Reference Group. She has also worked with the Wound Management Collaborative Research Centre (WMI CRC) Ultrasonic debridement expert group (past) and was an Advisor of Wound Education services, and member of the Credentialing working group (Wounds Innovation)– initially a joint project with Wounds Australia.

Wendy has contributed to international working groups developing resources and consensus documents focusing on both wound related pain (2005 – 2008) and wellbeing (2010 – 2012) and promoting advocacy in wound management (2014 – current). She is an invited member of the Patient & Carer Advocacy Working group who presented at the World Union Wound Healing Society Symposium (WUWHS) in Florence, Italy 2016. The group developed a discussion paper to launch at the European Wound Management Association conference in 2017, and are working towards contributing at the 2020 World Union Wound Healing Society conference in association with Ellie Lindsey & Leg Club Foundation along with the launch of a patient engagement consensus document chaired by Professor Keith Harding.

She is a past contributing author, invited reviewer and guest editor (2017) for the Wound Australia publication ‘Wound Practice & Research’.

KEY INTERESTS / FOCUS

Her areas of wound related clinical interest, research or publication include skin tear prevention and management, minimising wound related pain (including low resource setting), differentiation of neuropathic pain, wellbeing when living with a wound, clinicians as advocates, the safe and appropriate management of non-viable tissue and biofilm, advanced skills acquisition programs including wound debridement and policy development.

Since 2007 she has developed and delivered workshops, short courses (inclusive of online learning modules) and face to face practicums relating to wound debridement with a practical emphasis on conservative sharp wound debridement skills. These services have been delivered in New Zealand, Australia and Singapore. Supporting organisations in the development of local policy and increasing the knowledge and skills of health care professions to incorporate maintenance CSWD is a current area of interest and focus.

Wendy developed a conceptual model for risk assessment relating to wound debridement and co-authored the book chapter ‘Assessment & management of non-viable tissue’ in Wound Management for the Advanced Practitioner (Swanson, Asimus, McGuiness 2014).

VOLUNTEER

Since 2008 – 2018, Wendy has been a member of an Australian volunteer burns reconstructive surgical team in Nepal annually providing access to life changing surgical procedures for those living with burn scar contracture, negatively impacted by either economic or geographic barriers.

She also provides wound specific educational support to Nepali health care professionals during her rotations inclusive of evidence based practice relating to burn prevention & first aid, acute & chronic infection & inflammation, debridement, assessment skills and pressure injury prevention, assessment & management. She has worked closely with the JBI WHAM group to disseminate available evidence summaries for resource poor countries / communities.

In 2017 the team returned to Nepal for the first time since the devastating Nepal earthquake which occurred 2 weeks after the 2015 burns team returned to Australia. In 2018 just weeks before departure of the team, the Nepali government banned the entry of all international medical teams…we will need to see what the future holds.

GIVING BACK

Wendy has committed in 2018 to continue to ‘give back’ to those in need, by donating a percentage of the income from Wendy White WoundCare services to ‘The Shoe that Grows’ – a project that she and her team continue to be excited about! https://becauseinternational.org/the-shoe-that-grows