Wound Dressing Decision Tree for Home Health Nurses
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Abstract
Introduction: This project aims to provide an educational tool for home health nurses to assess types of wounds and determine the most suitable wound treatment for patients. Having an educational tool regarding wound care treatment and wound care knowledge can show expected outcomes of a decrease in wound healing time, a decline in cost related to wound care, and an increase in knowledge among home health nurses.
Methods: This quality improvement project used a pre-intervention design to assess the nurse’s knowledge at baseline before an intervention using the wound dressing decision tree and, lastly, a post-intervention assessment to determine the increase in the nurse’s knowledge of wound care. Intervention: After pre-test results were collected, a presentation was given regarding what specific wound dressings to use based on the characteristics and descriptors of the wound and how each dressing works. The Pretest and Posttest results were six weeks apart. Using a series of Wilcoxon signed rank tests, the International Business Machines Statistical Product and Service Solutions (IBM SPSS) version 29 was used to compare the pre-and post-intervention results.
Results: 14 participants completed the pre-test, 12 participated in the learning intervention, and 11 completed the post-test. A series of Wilcoxon signed rank tests were performed to compare the number of correct answers on the pre-test and post-test. For specific questions, the number of correct answers increased post-test compared to the pre-test; however, these increases were not statistically significant.
Discussion: The educational intervention showed no statistical significance between the two tests, even though the home health nurses expressed that the wound dressing selection tool was beneficial to them.