Question from a clinical instructor

[luv2quilt]

Hi all,

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.

Thanks!

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

What about different types of dressings? VAC dressings, hydrogel, hydrocolloid, alginate, collagen, etc. Different than the wounds themselves and something they could work on before/after actually seeing the dressing.

[WKShadowNP, DNP, APRN]

Also ostomy issues. Our Wound nurse is the ostomy certified person.

[KatieMI, BSN, MSN, RN]

Assessment and history pertaining to wound/ostomy care would be nice thing to teach. It is ridiculous how often patients go for weeks in specialized wound care clinic and end up in LTACH with critical malnutrition (we had a case of real scurvy not so long ago), severe anemia, wounds dutifully treated on an extremity with no peripheral pulses, elemental loss due to unbalansed nutrition in case of high-output fistulas, etc.

[nursej22, MSN, RN]

When our students go to specialty areas, they are to devise a teaching plan for a client they see, including possible community resources.

[sailornurse]

Discuss hyperbaric chambers & use in wound care. Where is the closest one located to you? What types of wounds are treated with this modality? What precautions, how does it work?

I remember my entire clinical group all 8 sitting inside the multi chamber at one facility.

[WKShadowNP, DNP, APRN]

Discuss hyperbaric chambers & use in wound care. Where is the closest one located to you? What types of wounds are treated with this modality? What precautions, how does it work?

I remember my entire clinical group all 8 sitting inside the multi chamber at one facility.

Now that sounds like a memorable experience. I'd love to have had that.

Most of my wound/ostomy education was gained and supported as a home health nurse.

[annabanana2]

I honestly think the most useful thing would be to read up on various wound care products - whichever ones happen to be on the hospital's formulary. If you don't know what the products are for or what they do, you don't know why we're using them, and so you really have no sense of the plan of care.

I use this website: https://www.clwk.ca/communities-of-practice/skin-wound-community-of-practice/ a whole bunch for looking up different products as well as the learning e-modules (click on the blue tab that says "Knowledge Library eModules). They have one for how wounds heal, one for wound assessment, wound cleansing, packing and how to do an ABI. Depending on what your students have already learned, maybe they'd benefit from the wound assessment or how wounds heal ones? I found them useful as a student.

The "Knowledge Library Documents" tab has a section for product information sheets - very clear one or two pagers on every product in our formulary. You folks probably use some of ours and some that are different, but probably some of the basics are there.

[luv2quilt]

KatieMI, I love that - how would you word it, though? Ask them what aspects of the patient are involved in maintaining healthy skin / decreasing risk? I'll probably also do a bit on the Braden Scale here pretty soon since it seems that nobody scores correctly (anywhere... nurse or student!)

[luv2quilt]

WKShadow, so is ours. That's good to add, for sure! Since ostomies are so "scary" to many, and I know they haven't learned about them yet, I was thinking it would be good to keep it simple - What is an "ostomy" in general, describe the three BASIC types of ostomies (colostomy, ileostomy, urostomy), what patient teaching should be done for a pt with a new ostomy, what psychosocial issues - anything else? I wish I could find a good "label the parts of the ostomy" type diagram.

[delawaremalenurse]

When our students go to specialty areas, they are to devise a teaching plan for a client they see, including possible community resources.

This...and they could develop a mini case-study to put the information into context

[luv2quilt]

I honestly think the most useful thing would be to read up on various wound care products - whichever ones happen to be on the hospital's formulary. If you don't know what the products are for or what they do, you don't know why we're using them, and so you really have no sense of the plan of care.

I use this website: https://www.clwk.ca/communities-of-practice/skin-wound-community-of-practice/ a whole bunch for looking up different products as well as the learning e-modules (click on the blue tab that says "Knowledge Library eModules). They have one for how wounds heal, one for wound assessment, wound cleansing, packing and how to do an ABI. Depending on what your students have already learned, maybe they'd benefit from the wound assessment or how wounds heal ones? I found them useful as a student.

The "Knowledge Library Documents" tab has a section for product information sheets - very clear one or two pagers on every product in our formulary. You folks probably use some of ours and some that are different, but probably some of the basics are there.

FANTASTIC!!! I have some ppt presentations from education I received at my last hospital and a really great chart outlining the different categories, which I will post if I can get it in electronic form, but I love those videos! Great for new and seasoned but refreshing nurses alike!