A Growing Field
Nurses who specialize in wound care will be interested to hear that this area of nursing practice is expected to grow as the U.S. population ages and more Americans develop chronic health problems. Individuals with diabetes and peripheral vascular diseases, which affect the blood vessels of the legs and arms, often suffer related wounds that require care. It is estimated that approximately 5 million Americans now suffer chronic wounds, with the number of cases expected to rise by more than 1 million each year--thereby increasing the demand for wound-care nurses even more in the coming years.
Requirements
Wound care is a nursing specialty that provides direct patient care, and includes assessing, treating and managing acute and chronic wounds. Because wound care covers such a wide range of medical expertise, before qualifying to take the Certified Wound-Care Nurse examination, an applicant must be a registered nurse who has earned a baccalaureate degree or higher. He must have provided a total of 1,500 hours of wound-care treatment to patients within the last 5 years, in addition to completing a minimum of 50 hours of continuing education. Certification is valid for 5 years, at which point a nurse is required to become recertified.
A Day in the Life of a Wound-Care Nurse
A typical workday for a wound-care nurse can actually be quite atypical. In view of the excessively high demand for wound-care services, wound-care nurses must often work long shifts. Upon first starting the day, a nurse will check the schedule of patients and look over their charts. The time spent with patients often includes education and counseling, as well as hands-on treatment. Because these nurse specialists generally provide wound, -ostomy and continence care in clinical, extended-care or home-health-care settings, daily duties can include draining wounds and fistulas (abscesses), treating surgical and ulcer wounds, or educating diabetic patients about basic foot care. Visiting home nurses may be assigned six or seven patient cases in one day, while some outpatient clinics sometimes schedule as many as 30 or 40 patients for treatment, depending on staffing.
Clinical Expectations
The nature of the job requires that a nurse specialist understand the causes of certain kinds of wounds and be familiar with the topical and systemic therapies that can be used for treatment. Wound-care nurses working in acute-care hospitals or long-term care environments frequently treat patients who have surgical wound infections, abdominal stomas or urinary and fecal incontinence. Visiting home nurses or those working in outpatient clinics must have extensive knowledge of other skin-care problems. They must be able to identify factors that contribute to healing, as well as recognize those things that prevent healing or contribute to breakdown of the skin.
Wound-Care Nurses Are Valuable Resources
In addition to treating a patient's physical needs, a wound-care nurse must be competent in dealing with the related psychological aspects of wound care, the goal of which is to improve the overall quality of a patient's life. Today's wound-care nurse is responsible for so much more than changing dressings. Medical conditions necessitating the need for chronic wound care can have a major impact on a patient's life; therefore, evaluating a person's emotional reactions is part of the care. Depending on the health-care environment in which the wound-care nurse works, a typical workday may involve conducting patient assessments, developing infection-control procedures, coordinating other health-care services for patients and/or educating patients and their families about self-care and pain-management techniques. While many wound-care nurses with advanced educations perform as nurse practitioners in the field, the scope of the job is constantly changing. More wound-care nurses are now functioning as wound-care consultants by educating the nursing staffs of acute and long-term care facilities about how nutrition and adequate fluid intake can aid in improving wound healing. Some nurses trained in wound care do not treat patients directly, but assist in the research of other treatment modalities, including surgery options, hyperbaric therapy and electrical stimulation.
Tags: wound-care nurses, wound care, chronic wounds, demand wound-care, home nurses, long-term care