University Healthcare: Wound Care Audit and Improvement Report

This report addresses wound care practices within a healthcare setting, highlighting the significance of accurate documentation, adherence to clinical guidelines, and the impact of audits. The student's response analyzes the current state of wound care, emphasizing the gap between awareness of patient-centered care and the actual quality of care provided by medical and nursing staff. The report examines the role of audits in assessing adherence to guidelines, identifying areas for improvement, and ensuring patient safety. The student proposes a plan for improving wound care, which includes conducting a wound care audit to identify issues, establishing guidelines, and implementing training programs. The report also references relevant literature supporting the findings and recommendations, offering a comprehensive overview of the subject matter. The report emphasizes the need for regular audits and the involvement of administrators, service managers, and quality managers in developing and executing audit protocols to achieve optimal patient outcomes.

RUNNING HEAD: HEALTHCARE
HEALTHCARE
Name of Student
Name of University
Author note

1HEALTHCARE
Response to Question 1:
Acute wounds should be treated as soon as possible otherwise they change into
chronic wounds. Hence, accurate documentation and following clinical guidelines to perform
facilitation of wound assessments is a best practice between the medical and nursing staff. It
is pertinent to substantiate a ‘treatment’ for the patient. The surprising fact is that in spite of
so awareness about patient centered care – the quality of wound care by both medical and
nursing staff is not up to the mark and considerably low from what it could have been
(Greatrex‐White & Moxey, 2015). It is surprising how wound assessment and care is still not
a priority care for surgical and trauma staffs and commands and instructions are just being
followed verbally which lead to all miscommunications. This problem would not appear even
if there is a proper written communication through documentations but guidelines seem to
have been formulated in vain for they are not aptly followed (Vowden & Vowden, 2017).
The most surprising part of the article was that more than half of the admitted patient
had no documentation of wound care and dressing.
Response to Question 2:
Audits are generally very helpful in assessing the real scenario existent in a hospital or
in any workplace. There are rules, regulations, treatment guidelines that are to be followed
every day with each admitted patient (Klok, Kaptein & Brand, 2015). This disciplinary
adherence to medical, nursing and patient care guidelines in vital in maintaining an
organization’s corporate image and justifies the representation of a hospital or a nursing
home as a brand (Bies & Greenberg, 2017).
Being an administrator, I have thought of doing an audit more or less every three
months but I look at the hard working professionals and seeing their resilient nature, I think
again not to question their trustworthiness and dedication towards their work. But again, an

2HEALTHCARE
audit has be an eye opener, it can bring out really strange things and ‘flaws’ that has been
made unconsciously by many of the most senior and most honest, dedicated employees.
Adherence to best practice guidelines is something I would like to put through a litmus paper
test using an audit tool.
Response to Question 3:
Audits in areas of would care, patient’s post-surgical care and medication policies are
conducted often in our hospital but not regularly.
Response to Question 4:
The administrators, service managers and quality managers are involved with the
development of audit tool and even execution of these audit protocols.
Response to Question 5:
The results of suboptimal care that is that if the intervention quality or the patient
servicing quality is a fraction lesser than guideline based best practice, it would do nothing
but harm the patient directly rather than curing them.
Response to Question 6:
In order to improve wound care in my hospital, firstly a wound care audit must be
done to find out the ‘loops’ in the health practice, at first. Then, the loops can be closed to
laying strong guidelines and by establishing better training methods on the same along
effective hierarchical positive reinforcement towards maintaining positive and a best practice
clinical environment.

3HEALTHCARE
References :
Bies, R. J., & Greenberg, J. (2017). Justice, culture, and corporate image: The swoosh, the
sweatshops, and the sway of public opinion. The Blackwell Handbook of Cross‐
Cultural Management, 320-334.
Greatrex‐White, S., & Moxey, H. (2015). Wound assessment tools and nurses' needs: an
evaluation study. International wound journal, 12(3), 293-301.
Klok, T., Kaptein, A. A., & Brand, P. L. (2015). Non‐adherence in children with asthma
reviewed: The need for improvement of asthma care and medical education. Pediatric
Allergy and Immunology, 26(3), 197-205.
Vowden, K., & Vowden, P. (2017). Wound dressings: principles and practice. Surgery
(Oxford), 35(9), 489-494.