I am a clinical instructor for RN students and will be taking turns sending my first semester students on rounds with the wound care nurse during a clinical day. After all, you can't be a bedside nurse if you don't know what other members of the team do! Since they obviously can't do their usual clinical paperwork (come up the night before to gather pt info, Hx, meds, patho, nursing dx / careplans, etc) do you have any suggestions or examples of what they could do instead? There is so much to be learned, but I'm not sure what will end up being on the schedule each time they go. They've learned about pressure wounds ad nauseum so I hate to put that on there and beat the dead horse. Maybe some definitions/examples of different types of wounds (laceration vs skin tear...)?
Any suggestions? I should probably have it made up by the weekend so I can send it out to next week's students.
Maybe the students could practice documenting wound assessments as they do rounds with the wound care nurse (assessing type of wound, measuring, etiology, exudate, periwound skin etc).
Understanding wound care products- foams, gauze, packing, various topical dressings (iodine, silver, chlorhexidine etc), hydrocolloids etc...
You could give each student or couple of students mini case studies for different types of wounds. For instance: A pressure ulcer, an infected surgical site, an MVA with multiple skin abrasions, a vascular ulcer, an arterial ulcer, etc. You could ask them to identify what type or types of dressings would be suitable for each wound and ask them to identify what else would be important for proper wound healing such as nutrition/pain control/positioning etc.
My mind is running away with this. Mr. smith is 89 years old and has been admitted to the hospital for pneumonia. He has a history of DM, CAD, and COPD. He is confused, has a foley, and is unable to ambulate or turn himself. Mr. smith has an area on his coccyx measuring 3x2 cm with a small area of dermis that is open (Picture of wound)
Braden score for Mr. Smith? Identify the type of wound? What type of dressing would be appropriate for this wound. Is there anything in Mr. Smith's history that would cause him to be at increased risk of developing this type of wound? Aside from dressings what other aspects of Mr. Smith's care are important to facilitate wound healing? What action can the nursing staff take to decrease the likelihood of Mr. smith developing a wound like this in the future?
I guess that would be a lot of work for you to come up with little scenarios for each type of patient. Pressure ulcers lend themselves to this type of assignment much easier than other types of wounds.
This is more difficult than it seems because they are newer students without much exposure. Even a teaching plan or having them learn the types of products to present a mini inservice to their classmates would be limited by what they saw on their observation day.
Maybe you could simply have them write up their experience with the wound nurse. What types of wounds they saw, what types of products used, what they thought of the job of wound care RN, why they think the job is important, what type of education is necessary to become one and if it is something that they think interests them?
npuap.org is a wonderful resource. We use it for our WTA's and are using it hospital wide for World Wide Pressure Ulcer Prevention Day on November 19th.
NutmeggeRN, BSN
2 Articles; 4,743 Posts
These are some great learning modules!