Every nurse is not a wound expert. In fact many nurses have no in-depth wound care training outside of what they experienced in nursing school. Yet wound care is an integral part of caring for the elderly. Whether it is monitoring new surgical incisions, caring for skin tears on fragile skin or addressing pressure ulcers, wound care is unavoidable in long-term care.
So what do you do when you don't have an expert in house? Traditionally, you've had three choices:
1) Send your staff to one of the many outside training courses
2) Create and administer your own training course, or
3) Hire a consultant.
But you may consider another option—using Health Information Technology (HIT) to facilitate clinical oversight and team conferencing.
By choosing HIT that is web-based and/or has telemedicine capabilities, you can expand your staff's access to clinical expertise without expanding your staffing budget. Implementing a web-based solution allows staff to share documentation and photos of wounds with team members including experts outside the facility.
Consultations on complex cases are easy to do with HIT, even when wound experts, referring physicians and/or key team member are not in the building. For example, physicians could view the most recent wound documentation and photos on line. This could result in more timely changes in orders as wounds change. Updates to the plan of care in a timely manner will improve wound healing outcomes.
Consider how much time you could save if your contract dietician could access and view the wound records of a resident and make dietary recommendations on-line before her next scheduled visit to your facility. Facilitating more timely dietary consults improves nutrition, which can greatly improve wound-healing rates.
Anne Scheurich, RN, BS, CWOCN is the Director of Clinical Services at Telemedicine Solutions/WoundRounds.