Clear gap between surgical wound practices and guidelines: study

Research into surgical wound management has revealed a clear gap between recommended and observed wound care practice.

Led by a team from Griffith University’s School of Nursing and Midwifery, the study aimed to describe surgical nurses' postoperative wound care practices and whether they aligned with evidence-based guideline recommendations.

The research team observed 60 episodes of wound care and found that while nurses did well in most areas audited, over one-third of nurses did not correctly use clean gloves, one-in-five did not properly use sterile gloves and about a quarter of wound care episodes were not documented anywhere.

Informed by these findings, the researchers, along with clinicians, developed an intervention using an integrated knowledge translation approach to improve wound care practice.

Nursing Review sat down with researcher Dr Frances Lin to discuss the intervention and find out why there are gaps between recommendations and observed practice.

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