16th National Wound Care Conference Programme

 

8:30 AM - 9:00 AM

Registration, refreshments and exhibition viewing

9:05 AM - 9:40 AM

The challenges of improving wound care data and information and how to overcome them

Mike Watson, Associate Director, Digital and Data, NHS National Wound Care Strategy Programme

A predominant focus of the NWCSP has been to strategically address the known longstanding barriers to the widespread use of wound care data for improvement to ensure that the NHS can leverage the value of data and datasets that it currently commissions and uses. This session will set out the hard work that is necessary to make things simpler for clinicians and healthcare professionals to be able to use data and information.

9:40 AM - 10:15 AM

Pressure ulcer surveillance - Update from the National Wound Care Strategy

Jacqui Fletcher, Clinical Lead Pressure Ulcers, National Wound Care Strategy

Pressure ulcers are in the ‘top ten harms’ in the NHS in England[1]. Investigations into the causes of pressure ulcers frequently show that unwarranted variation from evidence-based practice contributes to the development of pressure ulcers. Key to understanding and addressing this problem is being able to describe the size of the problem.

The current state of pressure ulcer care within the NHS is unclear. Although there are many publications reporting the results of audits and similar studies, unfortunately, these use a range of reporting approaches and definitions.

This lack of a consistent, systematic, and valid approach to data collection makes meaningful comparison problematic, either within or between organisations.

To address deficit, the NWCSP has been working with Model Health System colleagues, using SUS data, to develop a new point-of -care data collection and reporting system.  This work is currently being piloted with a number of hospital care providers.   The system is currently in its pilot stages and work is needed to improve the quality of the data, but it is hoped that this system can be rolled out across NHS England by quarter 1 2023 / 2024.

10:15 AM - 10:55 AM

Lower limb care: making national recommendations a reality

Dr Caroline Dowsett, Clinical Nurse Specialist Tissue Viability East London NHS Foundation Trust and Independent Nurse Consultant Tissue Viability, East London NHS Foundation Trust

This session will demonstrate that specialist nurses can have a positive impact on patient care by ensuring they lead on organisational change and adoption of current evidence-based practice including national recommendations.

A quality improvement project carried out in an East London community trust has shown that by reviewing the evidence, simplifying best practice and empowering community nurses to make safe clinical decisions can save time and resources whilst achieving improved outcomes for patients with lower limb wounds.

10:55 AM - 11:20 AM

Refreshments and exhibition viewing

11:20 AM - 11:55 AM

Wound care at the centre of the new integrated NHS

David Thorne, Director of Transformation , Well Up North PCN

The NHS in England is experiencing far-reaching change with the aim of developing a truly integrated system of care. That involves new incentives to avoid unnecessary hospital care and emphasise prevention. Care outside hospital is facing change through multiple initiatives that are highly varied in practice across the country; Primary Care Networks, Virtual Wards and Integrated Neighbourhood Teams. The last of these is a particularly important development for out of hospital care.

Wound care is central to all of the above and those involved in this specialism need to understand the change and how best to maximise the opportunities.

11:55 AM - 12:30 PM

Utilising clinical supervision and the role of the PNA to enhance staff performance

Carole Young, Independent TVN Consultant & Professional Nurse Advocate,

This session will introduce the role of the PNA (Professional Nurse Advocate) and the models used to support staff with Restorative Clinical Supervision. The PNA uses A-EQUIP (Advocacy and Education for Quality Improvement Personal plans) to guide and coach staff through a process of reflection and learning to look forward to their personal development. This supports a continuous improvement process building personal, professional and clinical leadership, enhances care for patients and supports revalidation. It has been shown to improve staff retention and well-being, enabling safe and effective patient care.

12:30 PM - 1:30 PM

Lunch and exhibition viewing

1:30 PM - 2:10 PM

Assessing pressure ulcer in dark skin tone

Luxmi Dhoonmoon, Nurse Consultant Tissue Viability, CNWL NHS Foundation Trust

Implementing Best practice statement in all care settings to reduce inequity in care.

2:10 PM - 2:45 PM

Rethinking Leg Ulcer assessment

Julie Stanton, Director of Nursing , Pioneer Telehealth , Wound healing and lymphoedema centres

The assumption is that patients leg ulcer aetiology is predominantly venous and this is how we are taught as nurses however, one of the most predominant wound types seen in most leg ulcer clinics is lymphovenous in my experience.

This session will question the current assessment methodology  and how to  change to include for assessment of lymphoedema and how this assessment can change your treatment pathways to enable effective healing for those chronic complex wounds and highlighting why this is important.

2:45 PM - 3:10 PM

Refreshments and exhibition viewing

3:10 PM - 3:45 PM

Avoiding surgical site infection in postoperative wounds

Kylie Sandy-Hodgetts, Associate Professor, Murdoch University

Rhidian Morgan-Jones, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon, Revision Knee Specialist, Schoen Clinic London

The global volume of surgery is considerable with over 313 million surgical procedures performed per year (Weiser et al, 2016). Despite advances in surgical technique, intraoperative practice and a rapidly expanding advanced wound dressing market, surgical wound complications (SWCs), such as surgical site infection (SSI) and surgical wound dehiscence (SWD) continue to pose considerable challenges globally for patients and healthcare providers. Novel methods for prediction, early detection, surveillance, and diagnosis are set to drive change, however, a back-to-basics approach is often needed, including the use of evidence-based guidelines. Learn more in this session about the status of this global issue and resources available to enable reduction of wound complications after surgery.

3:45 PM - 4:20 PM

Put the patient in control

Lorraine Jones, Tissue Viability Lead Nurse and independent expert witness, The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust and Walsall Healthcare Trust

Healthcare professionals are constantly reporting patients as non-concordant, which comes with additional challenges and often leads to deteriorating health particularly in wound care. However, it is important we treat the patients, who have capacity to make decisions, in a professional and sensitive way to encourage engagement. Sometimes this takes small actions to build confidence to gain the best outcomes. Lorraine will speak about her experiences and the development and launch of her patient autonomy pathway to help put patients back in control of their health in a safe and supportive way.