By Laurie Swezey RN, BSN, CWOCN, CWS, FACCWS

Thinking about becoming a certified wound care professional? If you have been researching your options, you may have come away more confused than ever. There are many certification bodies, all with different options and requirements, adding to the confusion surrounding wound care certification.

Clearing Up Wound Care Certification Confusion

If your mind boggles when you try to decipher acronyms such as ABWM, NAWCO and WOCNCB, you are not alone.

There are numerous wound care certification bodies. All of these certification bodies offer multiple levels of entry to sit for examination, yet none of them make this clear up front. Why is this? It may be that they are subtly encouraging you to take one specific course.

However, you should know that, in an effort to prevent specific programs and/or bodies from herding everyone towards a specific course of action, a wound care certifying entity must offer more than one level of entry in order to sit the exam. This is important - if you weren't aware of this fact, you may have believed that your options were more limited than they actually are.

Wound care certification examinations should measure your knowledge of wound care within the scope and expectations of your practice. Make sure you do your research and know what options are available before signing up for the wrong course!

About The Author
Laurie Swezey RN, BSN, CWOCN, CWS, FACCWS is a Certified Wound Therapist and enterostomal therapist, founder and president of WoundEducators.com, and advocate of incorporating digital and computer technology into the field of wound care.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author, and do not represent the views of WoundSource, Kestrel Health Information, Inc., its affiliates, or subsidiary companies.