The demand for wound care products is growing rapidly (Roberts, 1998). At the same time there has been an exponential rise in demand for evidence to support clinical nursing practices (Bradley et al, 1999). Evidence-based medicine has been proposed as a means of closing the gap between research and everyday practice (Medicines Resource Centre, 1995). It is defined as, “the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients”, (Sackett et al., 1996).

One of the major difficulties in striving to practice evidence-based medicine is how to determine the “best-evidence” for a given situation. In the hierarchy of clinical evidence, randomized controlled trials (RCT's) are considered ‘gold standard' in terms of clinical evidence (Britton et al., 1998) but they have limitations with respect to wound care, so other levels of evidence must also be considered in the decision making process. Case studies can provide evidence on poorly researched areas and rare complications (Nelson, 2000). They can help to generate hypothesis, direct future research (Collier, 1998), to share a wound management problem and to share clinical experience (Nelson, 2000).

The poster presentation will describe how the use of individual case studies can be taken one step further , forming a new tier in the hierarchy of clinical evidence. By setting up an outcomes tracking evaluation of a large number of patients with wounds, using selected dressings from a range of foam* dressings, the results from over 300 individual evaluations will be collated to form a summary of evidence or a ‘meta' case-study series.

The evaluation program has also enabled us to identify the strengths and weaknesses of a new technology in clinical practice and has facilitated the sharing of positive clinical experiences and an exchange of best practice between wound care professionals.