An International Board of Opportunity
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Any views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and/or participants and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy, or position of Wounds or HMP Global, their employees, and affiliates.
Dear Readers:
As humans, we seek others to build community and develop consensus. Therefore, on a personal note, it is wonderful to have the ability to reach out to friends, acquaintances, and colleagues to collaborate and advance the field. I have had the opportunity recently to reach out to other wound care practitioners around the globe to help start the process of developing an International Editorial Board for Wounds. With the aid of Dr. Terry Treadwell and his vast international presence, we have been able to enlist a core group of individuals that we hope will enhance our readerships’ perspective and understanding.
My desire to develop this board started a few years ago when, as one of the clinical editors of Wounds, I was reading a very "real-world" paper about taking care of wound care patients in the Basque region. It was very clear that while the biology of wounds is not very different among humans, the resources—as well as the perceptions of the patients and caregivers—differ hugely by geographic region. At that point in time, it became clear that the echo chamber of American wound care gives us a skewed, possibly misguided, and potentially unhealthy viewpoint on how to approach the closure of the acute or chronic wound. I thought we would be well served by reading with an eye to a global perspective.
As I have traveled, I have met, and in some cases taken care of, patients that live in very arid or very humid climates. In these varied environments, our moist wound care products behave very differently than they do in the northeastern United States. Even the most robust CAMPs can desiccate in these settings. In addition, I have visited with caregivers who work in countries where a nurse is paid less in a day than many of the moist wound care dressings we routinely use cost. These environmental and economic truths lead to multiple "right ways" to treat a wound, to multiple "standards of care."
The International Editorial Board will be submitting and editing papers that are of unique and focused interest to them and/or their regions. These papers may or may not be practical to the American medical/legal/economic delivery system; however, they will undoubtedly be informative and educational. The goal of these papers is to help us gain perspective, knowledge, and community. This is simply the beginning of a process to engage more of our worldwide knowledge base. We look forward to hearing your comments and feedback.
John C. Lantis II, MD, FACS
Editor-in-Chief, Wounds
woundseditor@hmpglobal.com
