The effectiveness of a health education intervention on self-care of traumatic wounds

To explore the effectiveness of wound care programme for emergency traumatic patient in Taiwan.

Wound care is one of the most major issues for trauma patients at home. Wound infection has been alerted mostly on medical treatment. Little is known about how healthcare education impact patient care of traumatic wound after discharged from emergency department.

A quasi-experimental design was used by using two groups post-test.

Random sampling was used to recruited participants, 89 participants in each group in emergency department at a medical centre in Taiwan. A 25-minute wound care programme was given to patients in the intervention group. A questionnaire was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme after 72 hours as patient followed up in out-patient department. The data of wound infection were collected from patient's medical record by followed 2 weeks after injured.

After wound care programme, the knowledge, skills of wounds care, the satisfaction of health education in experimental group are better than the control group (p < 0·05). Wound infection rate in experimental group (9%) is lower than control group (20·2%), and statistically significant (p < 0·05).

The wound care programme could increase the knowledge, skills of wound care of emergency patient and reduce the wound infection rate.

Wound care requites technical knowledge; thus, practical demonstration of teaching and self-practice is more effectiveness for patients in learning their wound care. An appropriated health programme can improve the patients' wound care and care quality.