Infection may be the biggest health risk for people who have wounds, making wound care critical to ensuring a positive patient outcome. Wound care not only improves mortality but can also impact social and physical expectations for a patient, which means that appropriate wound care can be one of the biggest issues impacting doctors or nurses who deal with any type of injury. However, wound care focuses substantially on infection control, because infections present the greatest long-term hazards from wounds.
Generally, wound care is broken down into four or five basic steps. Those steps are: (1) haemostasis; (2) cleaning the wound; (3) analgesia; (4) skin closure; and (5) dressing and follow-up advice. Not all steps apply to all wounds and sometimes the fifth step is omitted from wound care because it is follow-up care, but those are the basics that professionals address when handling wounds. To write an essay on wound care, we would focus on those five steps and how they relate to infection control and pre-packed wound trolleys.
A wound trolley refers to rolling devices that are packed with dressing and other items used in wound care, which are easily transportable and can be moved around a hospital, clinic, or other environment in order to bring care to a patient. In most settings, these trolleys are packed at the beginning of a shift or day and have all of the necessary items in them for wound care. However, because they are moved from location to location, there are concerns about cross-contamination and infection. Your essay could focus on the steps taken to ensure that items are packed in a sterile manner and that the top of the wound trolley, where the dressings are prepared, is sterilized between uses.