Nurses Working in Wound Care Produce Innovative Research, Best Practices

Nurses working in wound care often become innovators, devising new research, treatments, and best practices for the field, in their ongoing daily efforts to provide the best care for their patients, according to a Nurse.com article.

The article cites the work of Janice Beitz, director of the new Wound, Ostomy, and Continence Nurses Society program at Rutgers School of Nursing, who along with her colleagues has been creating algorithms for nursing care, including the prevention of pressure ulcers. They developed a one-page, 26-step visual algorithm to help nurses understand and prevent pressure ulcer formation.

Development of such best practice documents is not uncommon in the fields of wound and ostomy care, since best practices learned while treating patients regularly overlap with ongoing research, Beitz told Nurse.com.

“The great strength of this is that it captures much research evidence on various patient risk factors that are routinely collected and modifiable, and places them in one succinct visual aid,” Beitz said.

The INQRI funded project “Interdisciplinary Mobility Team Approach to Reduction of Facility-Acquired Pressure Ulcers” developed a sustainable, system-wide program for pressure ulcer prevention that enhances mobility of long-term care (LTC) residents. The primary goal, under nursing's leadership, was to reduce LTC facility-acquired pressure ulcer incidence by 50 percent using a cost-effective innovative program to increase resident active or passive movement. The team, which developed and implemented a program that involved using musical cues to remind residents to move or staff to help residents move, was led by Tracey Yap, a nurse researcher, and  Jay Kim, an engineer.