Nurses' reported practice and knowledge of wound assessment, assessment tools and documentation in a selected...

Complete wound assessment and accurate documentation are two pivots on which effective wound care is based and wound care is the traditional role of nurses. This study was designed to assess nurses' reported practice and knowledge of wound assessment, assessment tools and documentation.

Cross sectional descriptive design was adopted and the study was conducted in National Orthopaedic Hospital, Igbobi (NOHIL) Lagos, Nigeria which was selected because of high incidence of orthopaedic conditions with accompanying wounds of various types. A purposive sample of 251 nurses participated in the study.

Findings show less than adequate reported practice and knowledge. Some of the respondents, 83 (33.1%) reported that they were familiar with wound assessment methods. However, only 18 (7.2%), 29 (11.6%) and 7 (2.8%) correctly cited photographic method, physical observation, and tape rule respectively while 21 (25%) of them cited wrong methods such as evaluation of PH and chemical method, and the rest could not cite any method. Majority, 144 (57.4%) reported they were not quite or not at all familiar with Pressure Ulcer Status Tool, and none of the respondents who claimed to be familiar with these tools could answer any questions that tested their knowledge on specific aspects of the tool. What respondents claimed they included in their documentation varies from wound dressing done/wound is clean/wound is healing by 111(44.2%) while 40(16%) of them reported no idea of what to document. Modifiable variables like rank (NOII) and years of experience (1-5 years) were found to significantly affect their reported knowledge of wound assessment and reported practice of wound documentation.

Participants in this study are deficient in knowledge and practice of wound assessment and documentation. Utilization of wound assessment tools and continuing professional development for nurses are necessary to improve care outcomes for all patients living with wounds.