Ensuring quality wound care in the community

Abstract

This article describes how Silver Chain, a large community care provider in Western Australia, have recently used the Australian Wound Management Association's standards for wound management as a prompt and mechanism for reviewing the current standard of wound management across the organisation. In addition to examining current practice using a wound care audit tool based on the standards, the project included a survey of nursing staff knowledge and reviews of the wound education curriculum, training content and the policy and procedure manuals. Having identified those areas where the AWMA standards are not currently being achieved, the findings and the project recommendations will now be used by clinical service managers to modify current training, policies, procedures and work practices.