Editor's Note: How do providers apply negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) to the wound bed? In this interview, Emily Greenstein shares several tips for NPWT application and use. 

Transcript

Hi, my name is Emily Greenstein and I'm a certified Wound and Ostomy Nurse Practitioner at Sanford Health in Fargo, North Dakota. I have been in wound care for about 11 years now. I've been at Sanford for 15 years and I have been involved in many different wound care settings. I am currently the President for the North Central WOCN Society and I do a lot of research. I write for a lot of publications also.

When using NPWT, what practical advice do you have for wound care professionals not familiar with its application?

When you are looking at utilizing negative pressure wound therapy for your patient, a couple of key takeaways or tips would be to, first of all, make sure we're doing a good assessment of the wound bed, know what kind of tissue you're treating. You don't want to place it over any areas of exposed vessels or hardware. You don't want it to be over tendon, or a bone that's exposed. You want to make sure that there's no tracks or tunnels that are going someplace else that are unexplored.

You want to make sure that if it's an abdominal wound that the fascia is intact. We're not putting that negative pressure wound therapy directly over that. Other things that you want to assess is the periwound skin, what's the integrity of that? Then you want to do things to protect that periwound skin, either utilizing a picture framing method with the drape itself or using some sort of a skin prep over that area also.

Then when you're applying the drape, you want to make sure that you're just applying it flat. You're not stretching or pulling it or putting tension on it. The reason for that is if you're putting tension on the drape, you can get blistering at the edges.

About the Speaker

Emily Greenstein, APRN, CNP, CWON-AP, FACCWS is a Certified Nurse Practitioner at Sanford Health in Fargo, ND. She received her BSN from Jamestown College and her MSN from Maryville University. She is certified as an Adult-Gerontology Nurse Practitioner through the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners. She has been certified in wound and ostomy care through the WOCNCB for the past 12 years. At Sanford she oversees the outpatient wound care and is co-director for the limb preservation program. She currently serves as the President elect for the North Central Region Wound, Ostomy, and Continence Society. Emily has served as an expert reviewer for the WOCN Society and the Journal for WOCN. Her main career focus is on the advancement of wound care through evidence-based research.