Surgical wound care: current views on minimising dressing-related pain

Managing surgical wounds healing by primary intention is likely to become less problematic with the development of more effective advanced wound dressings; increasingly effective methods of medicated pain management; education; and advances in minimal access surgical (MAS) techniques. Future research is likely to focus on management of patients with surgical wounds healing by secondary intention. If so, management of surgical wound pain must become an integral part of assessment. Theatre practitioners, clinical nurses and surgical practitioners, working as part of the multidisciplinary team, are ideally placed to undertake this work and to include multimodal, holistic approaches to caring for surgical wounds and controlling surgical wound pain (Gould, 1999). Patient support and education is likely to become an increasing priority, particularly in view of the significant move from inpatient care to short-stay and day-case surgery.