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Hi, my name is Cathy Milne. I am an adult wound care nurse practitioner. I practice in Bristol, Connecticut across the continuum. I do acute care, outpatient, long -term care, assisted living, and I actually make house calls to the truly homebound. Oh, there are so many challenges with compression bandaging, and a lot depends on where you are in the system. 

In acute care, a lot of the issues you see is, can I compress at all? Do they have cellulitis or are there heart failure issues that have to be dealt with? And then it goes to the range of the long-term care, what do you have on your formulary? Do you have a skill set? Home health - how often do I need to go out there? Assisted living, oh, (some may think) that's too complicated. We can't keep them here in assisted living anymore. We're going to have to transfer them to a long-term care facility which has financial implications for the patient. I think the best place to get compression is really an outpatient wound center. People are skilled and you have a variety of options for your patients and you know you will have access hopefully to a lymphedema therapist. 

Practice, practice, practice. If you don't think you're really good at compression wrapping, then you need to practice more. And you know what? It's okay to ask for help. Your sales reps can help you. Your lymphedema therapist can help you. Your physical therapist can help you. So find out in your system who can help you and practice, practice, practice. So to work to improve your skills besides practicing, you can look at videos, although I would caution you about where you're getting that information because I've seen some really unhealthy kind of compression wrapping on some of those sites on the internet. So manufacturers do a great job and reliable sources such as WoundSource actually can help you improve your bandaging skills.