Nutrition and wound healing: the necessity of assessment

Wound healing is an intricate affair and good nutritional status is essential to promote effective growth and repair of body tissue. Nutrients play vital roles in the constitution of a well-balanced diet and any depletion in a person's nutritional intake, especially proteins, can lead to malnutrition and protein-energy malnutrition, conditions which are known to have considerable impact on health and well-being and on the wound healing process. A holistic nutritional assessment is paramount to the early detection of nutritional deficiency and the use of recognized nutritional assessment tools can significantly increase practitioners' awareness in its undertaking. While nurses are renowned to have a central role in the management of the patient who, nutritionally are at risk, it is equally important to remember that overall management is essentially a multidisciplinary task.