One way of working in wound care means that everyone in the team follows the same steps and reports in the same way. That provides continuity for the client and confidence for the staff.
Wound care is pre-eminently a subject where small differences have big consequences. One colleague changes the dressing in a different way from the next, and the reporting is extensive one time and a single word the next. For the client, that means less continuity. For the team, it means uncertainty. In this article you will read how to arrive at one way of working.
Differences in wound care rarely arise from unwillingness. Staff bring habits from previous workplaces, protocols are not always up to date or easy to find, and knowledge gets lost when staff change. In practice I often see that everyone is doing their best, but that there is no shared picture of how it should be done.
On top of that, wound care often spans several shifts and several colleagues. A wound that shows healing to one staff member suddenly seems to be assessed differently by the next. That is not down to the wound, but to different ways of looking and describing. That is exactly why a shared language is so valuable.
A way of working that the team has discussed itself is followed better than a document handed down from above. Take the time to agree together which steps you take when assessing, treating and evaluating a wound. How to approach this in practice is explained under agreeing a wound care protocol in the team.
Good wound reporting is short, factual and understandable for every colleague. Agree on what it should contain as a minimum, for example:
You will find more guidance under improving wound reporting.
An agreement on paper is only the beginning. I like to work alongside staff during care, look at a wound together with a colleague and discuss straight away what we report. That way staff learn from each other and the agreement naturally becomes a habit. I do this with a warm, personal approach, without any sense of being checked up on.
After a few weeks it is worth looking back. Is the way of working being followed? Are there bottlenecks? Adjust the agreement where necessary and make sure new staff work with it from day one. If you would like help with this, have a look at wound care and reporting.
I help with this through wound care and reporting and consistent working agreements. Want to know what that means for your organisation? Schedule an introduction.
Choose one client with a wound as an example and go through the entire reporting with the team. That makes agreements concrete.
That differs per team. What matters is that the agreement is discussed regularly in practice and that someone keeps an eye on it, especially in the first weeks.
The organisation often already has guidelines. The point is that the team knows how they are applied in its own practice, so that everyone does the same.
Yes. Wound reporting is often a good starting point, but the same approach works for reporting in general.
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