Rehauling the wound care team

Published Dec 6, 2014

35 Posts

Specializes in WCC.

Hello everyone and thank you for having me here. I have enjoyed this forum.

First a little background...

I have worked in long term care for 10 years, wound care certified for 4. Last year I started working in an LTAC with a wound care team and then was promoted to a wound prevention supervisor.

We effectively reduced in nosocomial pressure ulcers from an average of 6 a month to an average of 1 a month over a 9 month period. (5 months high and 4 months low after implementation)

I have recently moved on from that the the Director of Nursing position in the SAU adjacent to the hospital. It is an independently run facility but that was sharing the wound care team.

As of the new year, we are pulling back wound care strictly to our department. The department does have some issues handling wounds and prevention.

My plan is to have floor nurses pick the daily dressing changes back up, where they before never had to do this. We will have a wound nurse that does strictly weeklys, admits, declines, issues, etc.

My question is,

-Has anyone ever done this and how did they meet the resistance?

-Does anyone have any good suggestions?

-Turning, as everywhere, is a problem. How have you effectively turned around a non-turning unit?

I mostly wanted to start a thread to share a wealth of knowledge. If you have something good, let's here it!

Also please let's try to link what we know to best practice and evidenced based effectiveness.

Here we go!