Course Overview

Conducting a comprehensive wound assessment is a pivotal moment in wound care and effective wound healing. Performed correctly, wound assessment findings can inform how and what the best treatment pathways are for any patient experiencing a wound.

On the other hand, an incorrect or inadequate wound assessment can lead to a series of detrimental outcomes and escalating challenges for both patient and clinician, such as severe pain, restricted mobility, feelings of isolation, higher healthcare costs and even eventual deterioration.

This Ausmed Course provides healthcare professionals with the knowledge and understanding to perform a comprehensive and holistic wound assessment. Guided by current evidence and best-practice techniques, learners will enhance their skills to improve wound outcomes of the patients in their care.

Topics

• The importance of wound assessment
• Wound assessment frameworks and tools (including HEIDIE, TIME and more)
• Components of a holistic wound assessment
• Wound types, aetiologies, diagnoses and determining healing potential
• Assessing each wound characteristic
• Practical demonstrations of key wound assessment skills
• Best practices for documentation and clinical photography

Need

Comprehensive assessment is the foundation for effective wound management. It provides a basis to develop and implement personalised treatment plans, monitor progress and improve outcomes overall.

Incomplete or inadequate wound assessments can lead to poor wound management, which might impede outcomes for patients, frustrate clinicians and result in higher healthcare costs.

Despite its importance, many healthcare professionals lack formal training on how to correctly conduct a wound assessment. This leads to inconsistent evaluations, which further contributes to this issue. Knowledge, skills and confidence in wound assessment results in reliable and consistent information that contributes to achieving optimal patient outcomes.

Therefore, wound assessment education grounded in comprehension and fostering reliable and consistent assessments is necessary in order to empower healthcare professionals to make informed choices, enhance wound care and yield improved patient outcomes.

Purpose

The purpose of this Ausmed Course is to equip healthcare professionals with the essential knowledge and understanding to perform accurate and patient-centred wound assessments with confidence.

Learning Outcomes

• Analyse contributing factors that affect wound healing and how they can impact patient outcomes.
• Accurately differentiate between different wound types in order to ensure appropriate care is provided to the patient.
• Apply a holistic approach to wound assessment, considering the patient and key clinical indicators of the wound.
• Apply understanding of appropriate wound measurement tools and techniques to accurately quantify wound dimensions and healing progress.
• Implement best-practice methods for documentation when conducting a wound assessment.

Target Audience

All healthcare professionals working in any clinical setting where wound assessment and wound care skills are required.

Disclosure

No conflict of interest exists for anyone in the position to control content for this activity. Wherever possible, generic or non-proprietary names of medications or products have been used.

Educators

Presented by

Sue Templeton View profile

Sue Templeton RN, BN, MNSc(NP) is an experienced community-based nurse practitioner based in Adelaide who has been specialising in wound management since 1987. With a wealth of clinical expertise, she provides consultancy services and develops and delivers wound management education. Additionally, she has been involved in the development of wound management resources and tools. Sue has been actively engaged with the wound management professional community at local, national and international levels, conducting clinical research, publishing and presenting on the subject. Sue is passionate about improving the lives of persons with a wound and empowering others to deliver best practices in wound management.

Peer reviewed by

Karen Wendland View profile