The ongoing nursing shortage is also limiting the pool of wound care nurses.
“Nurses who are certified to care for wounds and ostomies are in short supply, at Kaiser Permanente and all over the country. And many are set to retire soon,” said Laureen Lazarovici, a writer for Labor Management Partnership, a joint effort by Kaiser Permanente and labor unions.
“Exquisitely acute” is how Christy Recke, a long-term care wound care specialist for Essity, describes the situation. She says high turnover among active wound and ostomy nurses is partially attributable to “lack of education or comfort in their role.”
The situation is alarming to many.
Amin Setoodeh, RN, senior vice president of Skin Health and Clinical Services for Medline, says he has seen a spike in skin injuries such as incontinence-associated dermatitis, skin tears and pressure injuries.
“The industry is truly struggling to meet standards of care with very limited resources and funding from the government,” Setoodeh says, adding that the nursing shortage also puts some patients at higher risk for developing skin breakdown or multiple wounds. The ratio of certified wound care clinicians with expertise to the number of patients with wounds [also] continues to decrease.
“The issue we are facing today is a national crisis and it will require several specific strategies to overcome potential risk factors related to wound care management,” Setoodeh says. This includes thorough assessments of the skin and wound care programs and developing an interdisciplinary prevention approach, he adds.
While acknowledging the severity of shortages varies geographically, Dea Kent, immediate past president of the Wound, Ostomy, and Continence Nurses Society, says “in some cases, patient care is likely suffering and staff are very, very thin.”
Complicating matters is a reduction of ostomy caregivers.
“Ostomy patients usually still fall into the nursing purview, so unless there is another professional in the building who is interested, there is no other help,” she says.“WOCN supports efforts by nursing organizations to reverse these trends. The outlook is uncertain. But we have a lot of hope.”
From the November 2023 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
