Wound Care Plan for Diabetic Foot Injury

Running head: WOUND CARE PLAN
WOUND CARE PLAN
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

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WOUND CARE PLAN
Wound care plan
1. Diagnosis of chosen individual including
 Presenting problem: Seventy year old patient with type 2 diabetes and an injured diabetic
foot is admitted in to the hospital.
 Other medical conditions: The patient is obese and high risks of cardiovascular diseases.
 Current or past nutritional status: The patient was a chain smoker and also consumed
alcohol frequently when he used to work but has abstained from alcohol now. Smokes 4-
6 cigarettes a day. The patient has mostly survived on coffee and deep fried junk foods
while at work and still do not stick to the treatment regimen set for him. Misses the
medication doses and forgets to refill the empty doses.
 The type of wound: diabetic foot injury after the use of prolonged, improperly shaped
footwear. The wound is painful.
2. Evaluation of the wound including:
 Wound bed status (include color/s): The wound bed was neuro-ischemic, pale and slough
with poor granulation. Gangrene in the second to the 4th digit in the left foot. The callus
present is thick. The wound is cool with absent pulses. The temperature of the patient was
102 ◦ F, BP was 124/80 mm Hg.
 Wound measurements: The area of the wound is about 3.5 cm2.
 Condition of surrounding skin: The patient has developed flap necrosis.

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WOUND CARE PLAN
 Wound exudate (color, consistency, odour): The discharge from the wound is thick, fowl
smelling and yellowish in color. The bad smell of the exudates determines infections.
3. Actual or potential impacts of the wound:
Peripheral neuropathy can give rise to excessive diabetic foot pain. The patient was having a
burning sensation. A complex combination of oxidative stress, micro-vascular disease,
cytokine deficiency and disturbances in the inflammatory combines at various degrees for
producing the painful aspect of neuropathy (Matsuzaki & Upton, 2013). The foot
complications have already affected the ways of living of the patient by affecting its
mobility. The patient was having difficulties in moving and accomplishing his daily chores.
Further deterioration of the gangrene in the digits have increased the risk of digit amputation.
This has brought about depression and anxiety in the patient for being dependent for every
single things.
4. Physiology of the healing process
The wound healing in diabetes is governed by some intrinsic and extrinsic factors. The
extrinsic factors involve the stress and the repeated trauma applied to the foot that has been
rendered insensitive for the ischemia and neuropathy (Gordon et al., 2012). The basement
membrane of the capillaries and the arteries thicken in patients with diabetes that delays the
wound healing. Hyperglycemia has a delirious effect on the healing of wound by the
formation of advanced glycation end products, inducing the production of inflammatory
molecules. Tsourdi et al., (2013), have showed that the exposure to high levels of glucose is
associated with cellular morphological changes, abnormal division of the keratinocytes and