(PI-040) Advancing Nursing Efficiency Using a Novel Extended-Wear Dressing in Home Health Care and Beyond
Thursday, May 16, 2024
7:30 PM – 8:30 PM East Coast USA Time
Introduction: Nursing shortages have system-wide domino effects1,2, starting in the acute hospital settings and continuing down to home health care. Professional nurses and their impact on patient safety, including outcomes in wound care, is well documented.3,4 The lack of sufficient nurses working in home care has at times delayed hospitalized patients from being discharged, and/or posed significant time constraints to home care nurses who need to perform frequent wound care utilizing conventional wound care products. Today’s healthcare challenges demand new approaches beyond the prevailing models to increase nursing productivity and still ensure excellent patient care and outcomes.
Methods: At our home health facility, we recently trialed an extended wear (up to 30 days) wound dressing, in lieu of traditional wound care modalities or conventional dressings that require frequent dressing changes (2-3 times or more/week). Transforming powder dressing (TPD) is made from polymers similar to those used in contact lenses. It protects the wound surface by forming an oxygen-permeable and moist wound healing barrier that may be covered with simple secondary dressings.The dressing may be topped-off from time to time with additional powder without requiring full primary dressing changes. Our objective was to decrease the time and frequency of home nursing visits for wound care without compromising patient outcomes or increasing costs. A home health nurse reviewed multiple established home care patients who had challenging wounds from a variety of etiologies who were being visited more than once weekly, and who were not significantly improving with standard of care (SOC).
Results: All patients treated with TPD were associated with reduced nursing time required per visit, lower frequency of nursing visits, improved pain and patient satisfaction scores, and accelerated healing trajectories without causing any adverse events. A patient with a painful radiation wound injury healed within weeks of conversion to TPD, after having the wound for several months without improvement.
Discussion: Strategic partnering with industry to trial innovations and evolve best practices resulted in improved home-health nursing efficiency. By incorporating TPD, clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction were improved while helping our nursing colleagues become as efficient as possible in this highly challenging healthcare environment.