Shutter

I understand the rationale behnd the newer generation of dressings. We are using several of them for that very reason. I made my original reply to this thread without having all the details. As I said before I was wrong and I'm sorry. You are right...too many of our orders are based on tradition and not on current knowledge. We have a constant battle with many of the doctors in our area trying to get them to even consider some of the new products. It's a long process, but a few of them are starting to listen. As nurses we have a responsibility to help educate the doctors (however difficult and/or unpleasant this may be) as well as our patients. We also need to help educate each other...which is the main reason I started using this site ( I need to increase my knowledge level and hopefully can help some others as well). This whole situation was definitely a lesson for me in several ways!

Hey, I need to apologize! I was wrong in what I said in my original post about this not being a true idea (re delaying wound healing 7 hours with each dressing change). I talked to our ET/WOCN at work this morning about it. She said this is true! It has to do with the fact that exposing the wound to air lowers the internal temperature of the wound and interupts the biologic process the body has started. The wound must warm up again to the "proper" temperature before the process can continue. She explained it better than that, but I can't remember all the technical details right now. I sure learned something though! I'm glad I have her as a very available and willing resource. Again, my apologies for replying to your question before I had checked all the information.

Whoever told you this does not know what they are talking about! As a wound care nurse for a home health care agency I have never heard this or read it. If changing the dressing and exposing the wound to air slowed down the healing process for any length of time, we would never get a wound to heal. I'd like to know where she got this information from. Sounds to me like this nurse just doesn't want to do the job.