Editor's Note: How can a multidisciplinary approach aid in pressure injury prevention? In this interview, Kelly McFee, DNP, FNP-C, CWS, CWCN-AP, FACCWS, DAPWCA she discusses how using the multidisciplinary approach to prevent PIs has helped her practice, along with promoting education and the use of prophylactic dressings.

Transcript

My name is Kelly McFee. I am a nurse practitioner in wound care and a director of wound care for mosaic life care in northwest Missouri.

1. How can a multidisciplinary approach benefit difficult pressure injury cases?

I'm a huge proponent of multidisciplinary pressure injury prevention. Again, I think this isn't just something that falls on the shoulders of nursing staff. I think this is something that we can all kind of wrap our arms around and have a huge impact on. For example, with COVID, you know, we had a lot of acutely sick patients, acuity that we'd never really seen before up until this point. And so, it's very important for us to work with our respiratory staff and get them involved, especially in medical device-related pressure injury prevention. When we have patients on our ortho-neuro unit, we want to make sure that we're involving the ortho team, that we're having those conversations with the OR staff. I mean, it's just, it's a good approach to adopt this multidisciplinary idea of pressure injury prevention.

2. What methods have you found to be helpful in your experience working with pressure injuries?

So there's a handful of methods and the basis of those methods really include a broad educational effort. But aside from that, you know, some more specifics, you know, we've implemented pressure injury prevention guidelines that involve prophylactic dressings. We utilized the Braden scoring system for skin risk to help guide who needs what. And a lot of that was set up into our nursing care plan so that they could, that part was very nursing driven. They had to identify the patient at risk and then they have interventions that they can utilize at that point. But, you know, we also have education that involves specialty beds for patients who are at risk or for patients who come in with pressure injuries, because we don't want those to get any worse while they're with us. And, you know, we involve components of nutrition, physical therapy, occupational therapy—it's just, it's a little bit that everybody can do in their part for pressure injury prevention.

About the Speaker

Kelly McFee, DNP, is a Board-Certified Family Nurse Practitioner, Certified Wound Specialist and Advanced Practice Certified Wound Care Nurse who has been practicing Wound Care and Hyperbaric Medicine in Northwest Missouri. She received a BSN from Missouri Western State University, MSN from the University of Missouri – Kansas City, and DNP from the University of South Alabama. Kelly serves as the Director of Wound Care for Mosaic Life Care and practices wound care both in the acute care and outpatient settings. She is an active member of the American Professional Wound Care Association, Association of Advancement of Wound Care, and the Wound, Ostomy and Continence Nurses Society. She serves on the Board of Directors for the American College of Clinical Wound Specialists and will be serving the college as the Chair-elect in 2022. She is also a member of the Prophylactic Dressing Standards Initiative, a joint collaboration between the NPIAP and EPUAP.