A holistic assessment will help determine your patient needs and help provide a shift from managing to healing wounds. This session will include engaging activities to help you understand how to perform wound assessments that can help make a real difference to your patients.

All non-healing wounds are thought to contain biofilm. The wound cannot start to heal until the biofilm is removed. Here, you will learn why biofilm delays healing, how to tell if it is present and eradicate it from the wound.

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Compression therapy, supplemented with good skin care, are the foundations of good leg ulcer care. But there is a huge range of compression bandages, kits, wraps and hosiery to choose from, which require varying levels of skill to apply. And the system selected will need to be comfortable and suitable for the patient. This session will offer you strategies to meet these challenges.

Unless dead tissue and biofilm are removed, a wound will not heal. The debridement method used needs to be aggressive enough to achieve this, while also safe for the patient. In this session, you will learn what constitutes safe and effective debridement and be introduced to a new method, chemical debridement.

Formerly known as moisture-associated skin damage (MASD), this is an umbrella term for the skin irritation and sensitivity caused by contact with corrosive bodily fluids, such as sweat, exudate, faeces, urine and stoma fluid, often resulting in tissue loss. This session will describe the risk factors, and explore the options for prevention and management.

No wound is ever sterile. But when the bacteria and other microorganisms present multiply beyond a certain point, the patient may experience a host response, presenting with the classic signs of local infection. Wound bed preparation is designed to both prevent and address this. This session will explore how to implement this in practice.

Most pressure injuries are avoidable, making them an unacceptable patient harm. A simple and well-known care bundle approach can help prevent their occurrence. This session will help you identify patients at risk of pressure ulceration and ensure a prevention programme is in place.

Effective communication is at the heart of delivering high-quality, person-centred wound care. This session will explore how communication techniques can shift the focus from task-oriented care to a more collaborative approach more likely to promote healing. You will gain insight into how to approach conversations around wound care with greater empathy, clarity, and confidence.

Learning outcomes:

• • Identify key principles of effective patient communication in wound care, including active listening, empathy, and clarity.
• • Demonstrate strategies for managing difficult or sensitive conversations related to wound management, such as pain, malodour, or delayed healing.
• • Apply person-centred communication techniques to enhance patient understanding, engagement, and concordance with wound care plans.
• • Recognise the impact of language, tone, and non-verbal cues on patient trust, adherence, and psychological well-being