Editor's Note: After attending SAWC Spring 2023, Emily Greenstein, APRN, CNP, CWON, FACCWS, shares several facets of good wound care that she explored at the conference. She discusses going back to the basics, which include wound cleaning and involving patients in care.

Transcript

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.

Last year after attending SAWC Spring, you wrote about the six pillars of chronic wound care. So far as you attend this year's SAWC Spring, what one facet of chronic wound care do you find most vital?

When I wrote the blog, The Six Pillars of Wound Care, what I really did was go back to the basics and look at what are we doing as a whole to treat these patients with chronic wounds? What do we need? What are we missing? Or what can be done better? Attending these sessions, kind of the theme that I've been seeing with many of the programs is going back to the basics. So, different products for cleansing wounds, and making sure that we're doing a job of debriding wounds, for example. That's kind of been a primary focus of a lot of the sessions that I've seen: cleansing and cleaning, which is very important in chronic wound care. Other things that I've seen or noticed kind of trending is a lot of focusing on the patient also. Involving them in their care, looking at managing comorbidities or underlying issues a little bit better, putting some more emphasis back on educating the patient, so that they could take more responsibility for their care.

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.