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Wound Care Nurses Specialist - Career Profile |
Career OverviewEvery year, many thousands of patients are discharged from hospitals with wounds and ulcers that will take many more months to heal and that require special care to remain free from infection.
Other patients are discharged with ostomies that will have dramatic impacts upon their lives for years to come; an ostomy is a surgically created opening in the body designed to facilitate the discharge of body wastes, and in many cases, they are used indefinitely to promote a patient's life.
Patients with these types of conditions cannot simply be released from hospital. They need to be given support from the medical community that will ensure their readjustment to life outside of the hospital and that will ensure their recovery and their health in the months and years after their hospital visit. They need effective follow-up care long after their release from hospital.
Wound Care Nurses Specialists play a vital role in caring for patients with wounds, ulcers, and ostomies who are discharged from hospitals. Wound Care Nurse Specialists provide outpatient, specialized care and education to facilitate the proper care of wounds, ulcers, and ostomies.
As the nature of health care continues to adapt and patients spend less and less time in hospital, the role of specialists like Wound Care Nurse Specialists, will be increasingly valuable to the promotion of a positive patient experience.
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Career RequirementsWound Care Nurse Specialists are required to train as Clinical Nursing Specialists prior to completing any advanced training in the field. They are required to have some advanced training in the nursing field. Most Clinical Nursing Specialists have advanced degrees. Approximately 93% of all CNSs have a Master's Degree or equivalent graduate certificate to compliment their training as an RN.
Wound Care Nurse Specialists are required to have an active RN license and typically have a Bachelor of Science Degree in Nursing to have obtained this qualification. An active license of a Registered Nurse is also required for Wound Care Nurse Specialists to practice.
Specialist training in wound care is also a requirement, typically met by the practical experience of each candidate. Experience is focused on outpatient dealing, so experience is particularly crucial to ensuring that specialist nurses are able to provide quality diagnostic care and treatment to a range of patient that they may not have the opportunity to follow up with regularly.
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Job OutlookThe treatment of non-critical patients is likely to shift to outpatient facilities. Patients are discharged from hospitals after much shorter periods. This is likely to be an increasingly common trend.
To ensure that patients continue to receive the best possible care, it is essential – and will become more so – that there are enough trained professionals with experience to deal with the vast number of conditions, chronic and acute, that impact people of different ages.
Many people suffer serious wounds that require considerable care but take a long time to heal. To keep non-critical patients in hospitals for the most part is a poor use of resources, therefore, it will be increasingly common for people to with wounds to be treated at home.
Trained Wound Care Nurse Specialists will be increasingly valuable as employees, as practitioners, as administrators, as educators, and as researchers, to facilitate and improve the care of patients with wounds inside and outside of hospitals. They will be increasingly valuable as professionals trained to organize and facilitate the best use of resources for the treatment of wound patients in a variety of settings.
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Career TrackSee Clinical Nurse Specialist
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CompensationSee Clinical Nurse Specialist
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