A curriculum to ensure nursing staff competency.

Nurses and healthcare assistants (HCAs) involved in tissue viability are expected to be competent, but there is little agreement over how to define competence or the expertise required by people filling different roles. Most training in England is provided in house by tissue viability nurses or interested non-specialists; England is lagging behind Scotland and Wales in terms of learning materials and other resources. Staff members at a strategic health authority were surveyed so a consensus could be reached over a basic curriculum for tissue viability and the competence expected of nurses and HCAs at different levels of seniority.

Complications of adapting pressure ulcer risk assessment scales.

This article challenges recommendations to adapt a pressure ulcer risk assessment scale (RAS) according to the clinical context. The transformation of the Cubbin and Jackson (1991) RAS is used to illustrate problems in scale development. When new factors are added to an existing scale, this can lead to unnecessary complexity.

Establishing nurses' preferences in wound assessment: a concept evaluation.

Aims And Objectives: The aim of the study was to contribute to increasing reliability of wound assessment. The objectives were to capture terminology used and to assess whether these words reflected personality preferences for information.

Background: Wound assessment forms are expected to be used reliably by non-experts.

Signs and symptoms of hypothetical wound assessment by nurses.

This is a report of a study in which tissue viability nurses, MSc student nurse practitioners, and post-registration nurses on a wound management module (n = 16) ranked signs and symptoms of wound healing, stasis and deterioration relative to their supposed importance. The top ranked sign for a healing wound was 'size' (reduction), for a static wound it was 'no' (change), and for a deteriorating wound 'increase' (pain). This was a convenience sample, and caution is indicated in generalizing results.

Problems identified in gaining non-expert consensus for a hypothetical Wound Assessment Form.

A post-hoc analysis was carried out of a session on a wound management diploma level module that was intended to promote understanding of the complexity of wound assessment. Postregistration student nurses (n = 16) from both hospital and community settings participated in brainstorming of categories (i.e.