Guest Editorial: The Sweet Smell of Competent Care

  As wound care providers, taking care of our patients should be our priority. Many of them have no place else to turn, and to provide less than the best care is not acceptable. I am reminded of a story about other professionals who could choose to provide less than the best.

  In times past, the apothecary was charged with making perfume. Using a mortar and pestle, he would grind and mix the best, most fragrant spices and resins to ensure the most outstanding fragrance possible. The sweet aroma of the mixture would permeate the shop, attracting flies and gnats through the screenless windows. Occasionally, one of the winged visitors would get too close to the mixture and become trapped, so the apothecary would stop and remove the insect, along with some of the mixture. The time and perfume money lost was a great frustration to the apothecary. If he wasn’t paying attention or chose to ignore the gnats, one or some of them could be mixed into the fragrant mixture. If the apothecary’s laziness and insect infestation persisted, the mixture’s sweet scent soon was diminished; over time, the once-fragrant mixture began to stink from the dead insects. Soon it was worthless and the entire mixture had to be discarded at great expense to the apothecary.¹

  Has this ever happened to you in the care of your patients? As wound care providers, all of us should strive to do the best for our patients, to provide pure, sweet-smelling treatments. Unfortunately, we sometimes may feel we can cut corners just a little to make our lives easier with no difference in the outcome. Maybe we can skip the debridement this visit. Perhaps we can save some money for the wound center if we choose a cheaper dressing or bandage. With so much else to be done, surely one small short cut won’t make any difference.

  Just as with the perfume, once we begin to ignore one or two little things in the management of the patient, ignoring the big things becomes easier until soon we are not providing appropriate patient care. It may be time to throw out the perfume and start again with the renewed goal of providing the best care we can.

  Evaluating your own outcomes may be the place to start. It can be an eye-opening experience to discover areas where too many insects may have become trapped in our care mix. To learn more about current best practices, you may need to review a recently published wound care book or read journal articles that can sharpen wound care therapy acumen. Reviewing published guidelines for the treatment of wounds that illustrate evidence-based care and attending local, regional, or national wound care meetings can provide up-to-date information and new contacts, which can be valuable resources.

  We must do whatever it takes to restore the purpose and goal for our work — ie, improved patient health through the provision of quality, evidence-based care for each individual. Remember, for many patients, we are already the last resort for any chance for healing. Let’s not become lazy or indifferent in our care by letting the flies contaminate the ointment. We want our perfume to provide the perfect fragrance needed by each patient.

 This article was not subject to the Ostomy Wound Management peer-review process.

1. Adopted from Treadwell TA. Avoiding shortcuts in wound care. WOUNDS. 2008;20(2):8.