New Nurse - need help with wounds

Specialties Wound

Published

Hi,

I am a new med/surg nurse (3 months) and need help with which dressings to use on different stages of decubs. I realize different hospitals use different products, but if I could get a general idea of what to use when it would be great. Our hospital doesn't have a "wound class" for new grads unfortunately. Is there a website I can go to that will show me pictures of the stages and what products to use for each?

Thanks so much!

Chris

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Specializes in Telemetry/Med Surg.

Most dressing changes I have done on decubs have specific orders on what to use.

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You need orders by the doc or protocols to follow that have been approved by the medical staff.

If your facility does not have a WOCN that comes around to assist you and you don't have protocols, consider getting your facility to research and write standing orders that are approved by all the docs so the docs can sign the orders later but you don't have to wait for an order to start treatment.

This is going to become even more important since Medicare/insurance will no longer be paying for treatments of pressure ulcers acquired in facilities.

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I am sorry to hear that your facility does not offer this!! You would think everybody should get on board with basic wound stuff since a lot of law suits are out there! Any how, there are a lot of info on wounds. You can Google this (ie Stages of wounds) and also look at images from google. Let me help you start out by you telling me what kind of products your hospital carries and I can tell you what it is for and the rationale behind it. Ask me specific questions and we can go from there. There is a lot of info on wounds...

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Hi,

I am a new med/surg nurse (3 months) and need help with which dressings to use on different stages of decubs. I realize different hospitals use different products, but if I could get a general idea of what to use when it would be great. Our hospital doesn't have a "wound class" for new grads unfortunately. Is there a website I can go to that will show me pictures of the stages and what products to use for each?

Thanks so much!

Chris

Hi There.

For more information on staging pressure ulcers, go to the NPUAP website: http://www.npuap.org/ You can also refer to information on the RNAO best practice on prevention of pressure ulcers. http://www.rnao.org/Page.asp?PageID=924&ContentID=816. It is important to note that there is no recipe to wound care and that each wound must be treated individually. It is imperative to identify and manage the etiology first and foremost. Treatment options for each stage are well discussed in the RNAO's best practice's for pressure ulcers: http://www.rnao.org/Page.asp?PageID=924&ContentID=721. Patients with stage III, stage IV, unstageable, deep tissue injury and infected pressure ulcers should be referred to a WOC/ET nurse. It also requires a multi-disciplinary approach.

It is also important not to just focus on the dressing, but to focus on treating the whole person. Stage I usually just require you to get the patient off the ulcer. Stage II depend on location, +/- infection, and amount of exudate. I hope the info helps.

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Specializes in Mostly ETC, very interested in wounds.

I would look at your facilities. Policy and procedures as a guideline because no matter what a web site says you must always follow the policy.

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