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Topic:
Pain is a common occurrence in patients with chronic wounds. As a result of chronic unrelenting pain many aspects of activities of daily living and quality of life are affected. Despite efforts to raise awareness about pain, the majority of patients continue to suffer from painful wound symptoms. Many clinicians still feel ill at ease assessing pain and are often unsure what strategies to institute to promote comfort. Over the past decade, a number of clinical guidelines and consensus statements have been published drawing attention to the extent of wound-related pain and the ability to relieve pain in patients with chronic wounds (EWMA 2002: IPA 2004; WUWHS 2008). This new consensus document reflects a burgeoning international concern and understanding about wound related pain.
Purpose and objective:
To facilitate dissemination of the guidelines and knowledge transfer, the Woundpedia is established to provide succinct just-in-time information that is easy to access and web-based. The purpose of presentation will describe the process through which the pain related information is revised and updated based on feedback from international clinicians.
Method
A panel of international wound experts were identified and assembled to generate clinical recommendations for practice. Draft statements were developed based on the scientific evidence in the literature and expert opinion. Drafted statements were sent to 60 international wound care clinicians for feedback using a web-based methodology. They were asked to rate the statements with one of 4 anchors: strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree and strongly disagree based on scientific merit and expert opinion. If any of the items did not receive an 80% agreement rating, the statements were adjusted based on the participant’s comments.
Conclusion:
Pain is a common occurrence in patients with chronic wounds. As a result of chronic unrelenting pain many aspects of activities of daily living and quality of life are affected. Despite efforts to raise awareness about pain, the majority of patients continue to suffer from painful wound symptoms. Many clinicians still feel ill at ease assessing pain and are often unsure what strategies to institute to promote comfort. Over the past decade, a number of clinical guidelines and consensus statements have been published drawing attention to the extent of wound-related pain and the ability to relieve pain in patients with chronic wounds (EWMA 2002: IPA 2004; WUWHS 2008). This new consensus document reflects a burgeoning international concern and understanding about wound related pain.
Purpose and objective:
To facilitate dissemination of the guidelines and knowledge transfer, the Woundpedia is established to provide succinct just-in-time information that is easy to access and web-based. The purpose of presentation will describe the process through which the pain related information is revised and updated based on feedback from international clinicians.
Method
A panel of international wound experts were identified and assembled to generate clinical recommendations for practice. Draft statements were developed based on the scientific evidence in the literature and expert opinion. Drafted statements were sent to 60 international wound care clinicians for feedback using a web-based methodology. They were asked to rate the statements with one of 4 anchors: strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree and strongly disagree based on scientific merit and expert opinion. If any of the items did not receive an 80% agreement rating, the statements were adjusted based on the participant’s comments.
Conclusion:
Woundpedia provides just in time information that is based on evidence and feedback from international experts. We describe a sound and scientific process that combines experimental evidence with expert opinion and patient preference to establish the foundation of evidence based (informed) medicine.