Survey on Wound Hygiene

Data from a survey created to better understand wound care awareness, implementation, barriers, and outcomes was recently published in the Journal of Wound Care. The survey, which was created by the Journal of Wound Care projects team with consultation from ConvaTech, was 26 questions long and featured a variety of multiple and open-ended questions. It was sent out by email and online, being open for a little over 12 weeks. Nonprobability sampling was used and authors of the survey reviewed the outputs to help analyze the data with the support of a medical writer.

In total, 1,478 people responded to the survey and agreed to the use of their anonymous data. Almost 90% were from the United States or United Kingdom, and most worked in wound care specialist roles, equally distributed between community and acute care settings. Of those in wound care, 66.6% have been in the profession for more than 8 years.

The respondents work across the spectrum of wound types, the article explained, with 57.4% having heard the concept of wound hygiene. Of that percentage, 75.3% have implemented it, 78.7% answered that they ‘always’ apply wound hygiene, and 20.8% ‘sometimes’ do so.

The top 3 barriers to wound care adoption were:

1. Confidence (39%);
2. desire for more research (25.7%); and
3. competence (24.8%).

After implementing wound hygiene, 80.3% reported their patients’ healing rates had improved.

Respondents strongly agreed that implementing wound hygiene is a successful approach for biofilm management and a critical component for improving wound healing rates in hard-to-heal wounds, the article wrote. Study barriers, on the other hand, are demonstrating comprehensive education and training, institutional support for policy and protocol changes, and more clinical research to support wound hygiene.

Reference:

Murphy C, Atkin L, Hurlow J, Swanson T, de Ceniga MV. Wound hygiene survey: awareness, implementation, barriers and outcomes. J Wound Care. 2021;30(7):582-590. doi:10.12968/jowc.2021.30.7.582