From the Top: How Much Difference a Year Can Make

  The Association for the Advancement of Wound Care spent the past year focusing on new strategies to meet our mission to be the leader in interdisciplinary wound healing and tissue preservation. Our 5-year plan, established for 2010–2014, strives to increase financial and human resources, assess the need for and accumulate a substantial number of new membership benefits, and retain and increase membership, just to name a few of our objectives.

  After we expanded our human resources by hiring a project manager, our patient and caregiver group flourished and was renamed Wounds in Need (WIN); plus, we decided to offer patients and their lay-caregivers free membership for life. Our state-of-the-art website www.aawconline.org, was launched and includes professional and patient caregiver sections. The website now contains many comprehensive features, including guidelines and patient education materials. Perhaps the most intriguing feature at this time is the Virtual Wound™, an interactive, evidence-based wound care education tool for healthcare providers.   In the last 6 months alone, our membership has grown 10%. Final calculations show that AAWC member attendance at SAWC Fall in Las Vegas grew by more than 100% over last year. With the addition of several financial benefits for members, such as a 25% discount to the Wound Certification Prep Course held each year in conjunction with SAWC, clinicians are realizing the importance of AAWC membership and that it offers the most value among all wound care associations.

  The AAWC continues to do a great deal for members and for wound care as not only a specialty, but also as a collaborative community. You may have let your membership lapse, or perhaps you have not yet joined. Now, more than ever before, wound care professionals are encouraged to join to save precious time and money and to be a part of the largest, ever-growing, truly trusted, not-for-profit network of multidisciplinary wound care professionals in the world. If we have had so much impact in just 1 year, imagine what the future holds for wound care in general and the Association in particular.

  On behalf of the AAWC Board of Directors, I thank you for your commitment to wound care and for your continued membership in AAWC.

  With warmest regards and best wishes for much success and happiness today and always,
  Tina Thomas
  Executive Director