Special to OWM: Why Wound Care? Launched
Ostomy Wound Management’s mother ship, HMP Communications Holdings, LLC (HMP), has launched Why Wound Care?™ (WWC?) an initiative designed to make students and recently graduated nurses aware of the opportunities available in pursuing a specialized career in wound nursing and provide complimentary and deeply discounted educational resources to achieve their goals.
Nurses who specialize in wound prevention and care are in high demand across all patient care settings. That demand is only going to grow with an aging population combined with an increase in the prevalence of persons with diabetes/obesity. To help fight this growing epidemic, WWC?™ can serve as a trusted resource for new nurses seeking to enter the field.
WWC?™ will be championing students to choose wound care as a specialty nursing career by providing the tools they need to be successful. Complimentary registration will provide nurses free access to PDFs of all 25 chapters of Chronic Wound Care: The Essentials, an industry leading textbook, the OWM tablet edition, and 2 Wound Assessment and Documentation On-Demand learning modules taught by Dot Weir, RN, CWON, CWS, the co-chairperson of the semi-annual Symposium on Advanced Wound Care (SAWC) Spring and Fall meetings. In addition, the WWC?™ website will eventually include 12 complimentary slideshow wound care teaching modules being developed by the WWC?™ advisory board for nursing school faculty to utilize in course curricula.
This new initiative increases income opportunities. According to the Wound, Ostomy and Continence Nursing (WOCN) Society’s 2008 WOC Nursing Salary and Productivity Survey, the mean annual salary for a Certified WOC nurse with a master’s degree was $83,000, with the top 25% earning $91,500; a CWOCN with a doctorate degree during the same time earned $90,000, with the top 25% earning $91,500 (versus the median income for registered nurses of $64,690, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Approximately 6.5 million Americans have chronic wounds and an estimated 2% of the population have a chronic wound secondary to pressure, venous, or arterial disease or as a complication of diabetes mellitus. Because these numbers are on the rise due to an aging population and increases in the prevalence of diabetes and obesity, so is the demand for nurses specializing in wound care. As the industry leader, HMP felt a responsibility to not only champion more nurses to become clinically certified in wound care, but also (through the WWC?™ initiative) to provide nursing students and recent graduates world-class educational resources to help them successfully combat this growing epidemic.
WWC?™ joins HMP’s growing family of innovative, evidence-based publications and CNE activities across therapeutic fields, including vascular disease management, cardiology, podiatry, and wound care. For nurses considering a career in wound care or for more information about Why Wound Care™, visit www.whywoundcare.com.
This article was not subject to the Ostomy Wound Management peer-review process.
