Wound Hygiene Survey: Knowledge, Implementation, Obstacles and Results

Abstract

Objective: A survey has been developed to understand the current knowledge and implementation of the wound hygiene concept one year after its dissemination. Obstacles to implementation and outcomes were also discussed.

Method: The Journal of Wound Care (JWC), in collaboration with ConvaTec, developed a 26-question survey, composed of multiple-choice and free-text responses, which it distributed globally via email and online; The survey was open for about 12 weeks. Due to the exploratory nature of the research, a non-probability sampling technique was used. The authors analyzed the survey results to draw conclusions from the data.

Results: A total of 1478 participants consented to the use of their anonymized combined data. Almost 90% were from the United States or the United Kingdom. Most worked as wound care specialists and were evenly distributed between primary care centers and acute care hospitals. 66.6% had worked in wound care for more than 8 years. Respondents worked with a wide variety of wound types. More than half (57.4%) had heard of the concept of wound hygiene, and among them, 75.3% had implemented it; 78.7% responded that they applied it "always", while 20.8% did it "sometimes". The top three barriers to adoption were trust (39.0%), desire for more studies on wound hygiene (25.7%) and competence (24.8%). Overall, following the implementation of wound hygiene, 80.3% reported that their patients' healing rates had improved.

Conclusion: Respondents strongly agreed that implementing wound hygiene is a successful method for biofilm treatment and a critical component in improving healing rates in hard-to-heal wounds. However, the obstacles to its adoption and implementation demonstrate that comprehensive education and training courses, institutional support for policy changes, protocols, and more clinical studies are needed to promote wound hygiene.