A Day, a Week, a Month in the Life of a Wound Nurse Practitioner/Scientist

Working at a 620-bed academic and level 1 trauma center is exhilarating and challenging for wound specialists. We engage in multiple projects to provide the best care for our patients, who range in age from 22 weeks’ gestation neonates to centenarians. We have an interdisciplinary team working to assess and provide the best interventions to prevent pressure injuries, treat wounds, and provide education. This interdisciplinary team consists of a nurse practitioner (NP) as director of wound care, a plastic surgeon, a physical/ occupational therapist, a dietician, 5 wound-certified nurses, and 2 analysts. This team works closely with the quality and safety analysts to collect data and track 1) pressure injury risk, 2) quality of care and documentation, 3) whether a pressure injury was community or hospital acquired, 4) patient length of stay, and 5) number of patients with pressure injuries who have readmissions.

The quality and safety analysts on the team work to synthesize the data from risk management reports, NDNQI/Vizient reports, electronic medical records reports, coding reports, and nurse-led manual abstraction. This synthesized robust data provide real-time information on our hospital patient population with wounds and allows immediate evaluation of current problems. As problems are identified, we seek solutions with quality improvement cycles or institutional review board–supported research projects conducted on campus.

We have medical, nursing, NP/physician assistant, veterinary, biomedical engineering, and agriculture schools associated with our campus. This mixture of disciplines uniquely sets the stage to deliver population health and science research while providing the opportunity to educate nursing/medical staff, including NP and physician assistant students. Recently, we have been working with the Wound, Ostomy, and Continence Nurses Society to provide the Wound Technology Associate program for nurses and physical therapists within the hospital and for nurses in the community. We believe it is essential to share our real-world experience to develop a working relationship with nurses so that we all speak the language of wounds. We have trained more than 150 nurses, NPs, and physical therapists in wound care and are currently teaching nurses in the local homeless shelter how to perform wound care with limited to no resources.   

I am proud of our International Wound Residency Program. We hosted a nurse manager from China for a 3-month rotation. She was able to attend a past Symposium on Advanced Wound Care and co-presented a poster on deep tissue injuries in the intensive care unit. We also hosted 3 nurses and 1 physical therapist from Thailand during the program in 2019.

In addition, we co-created and starred in 6 wound videos for caregivers that were sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons (see Figure). These short videos are available on the AARP Home Alone Alliance website: https://www.aarp.org/ppi/initiatives/home-alone-alliance/.

Every team member volunteers on committees and boards, in their churches, in the hospital, city, and state. I  encourage any health care provider and wound association member to join a team to improve education and research in the vast world of wounds. With a public forum, we can advocate for our patients and develop working relationships with others interested in wounds and promote patient care.

Dr Kirkland-Kyhn is the director of wound care, UC Davis Medical Center, Sacramento, CA. The opinions and statements expressed herein are specific to the respective authors and not necessarily those of Wound Management & Prevention or HMP Global. This article was not subject to the Wound Management & Prevention
peer-review process.