Coordinating Wound Care in a Large Multi-State Hospital System

Acute care hospitals today are facing multiple challenges of patient satisfaction, readmissions, patient safety, accreditation, financial solvency, to name a few, all the while making sure that practice is evidence-based.  After our large 1200 bed facility successfully maintained our Skin Care Resource Nurse (SCRN) program, the administration decided to bring that program system wide to all 9 hospitals with one located in Florida. We were faced with the challenges of wound care specialists, personalities, logistics, communication, etc. After making sure that all facilities had a wound care nursing specialist, we all met and established objectives, short and long term goals, meeting times and locations. Our wound care affinity group meets monthly (both face-to-face and Go-TO Meeting computer hook-up) and has a long list of accomplishments. Among our accomplishments are: Standardizing pressure ulcer policies and protocols, pressure ulcer prevention and treatment education, documentation, skin care resource nurse program and prevalence studies. We collaborate with our Supply Chain representatives and continually review products in order to make an impact financially while maintaining evidence based practice. Our group shares presentations at Nursing Orientation and the new nurses spend time with their SCRN on their unit. We are now able to collaborate with our Advanced Practice Wound Care specialists to coordinate follow-up care at various facilities and home to make sure that principles of wound healing are maintained in practice. In the spring of 2013 each facility had an "Affair to Remember" fair at their facility-all sharing common posters and information and over 600 nursing and ancillary personnel attended. Our newest project is getting wound photography into the electronic medical record.