Venous leg ulcer care: how evidence-based is nursing practice?

Objectives: The objectives of this study were to (1) determine how congruent community-provided leg ulcer care was with best practice for venous leg ulcers and (2) identify organizational and clinical factors associated with the provision of best practice for venous leg ulcers.

Design: The practice variation study group was an audit of nursing agency client records to determine the provision of care.

Setting And Subjects: The study population was a home care cohort of persons with venous leg ulcers (n = 66) who received care from one Ontario home care nursing agency between March 1999 and November 1999.

Assessing venous ulcer population characteristics and practices in a home care community.

To plan for a new community leg ulcer service in one Ontario region, venous ulcer population characteristics and current community care practices were obtained from a home care cohort of people with venous ulcers. A secondary analysis was conducted on the venous ulcer cohort using data collected during a Regional Prevalence and Profile Study. Patients were identified based on the clinical syndrome for venous disease criteria described in the Royal College of Nurses clinical practice guidelines and by the presence of an ankle-brachial pressure index 0.