Exciting International Partnership in Wound Care
Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:48:00 BST
|
Dr Karen Ousey recently visited the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne to meet with Associate Professor Karen-leigh Edward. Karen and Karen-leigh have developed an international collaborative partnership to investigate the effect an acute or chronic wound can have on the psychological morbidity/ wellbeing of patients, or the resilience that patients and their family care givers have to develop to manage the day to day activities of living with a wound. With the ever increasing priority of healthcare providers internationally to reduce
length of in-patient stay, there has been an increase in the amount of patients who return to the community with a wound healing by primary or secondary intention. There has been little research to explore how patients and/or carers manage their day to day activities when being faced with the complexities of living with a wound. It is recognised that psychosocial factors, such as anxiety and depression, are associated with delayed healing of wounds, and that when patients are actively involved in their care, outcomes are improved.
Associate Professor Karen-leigh Edward is a registered nurse, with a graduate degree in psychology and is also the Director/Chair of the Nursing Research Unit at St Vincent’s Private Hospital (Melbourne) since 2011. With internationally renowned expertise in the mental health care and nursing practice she has particular interest in co-morbidity, resilience and nursing practice. A/Prof Edward has more than 100 published works and is deeply committed to contributing evidence for nursing and midwifery practice in a patient-centred framework. In 2011, she won an award from the Australian Publishers Association for the best wholly Australian tertiary textbook for nursing education and in 2012 she was awarded a national award as Emerging Leader for Catholic Health Australia. Catholic Health Australia includes 75 hospitals nationwide.
Australian Catholic University - Left, St Vincent's Private Melbourne - Right
This exciting partnership between the University of Huddersfield and the Australian Catholic University will explore and investigate this area and aims to develop international guidance to promote wellbeing programmes to promote resilience. The team have are awaiting their systematic review to be published in the International Wound Journal entitled:
Identifying and exploring physical and psychological morbidity and patient and family care giver resilience following acute wound development and/or wound blistering post orthopaedic surgery: a systematic review
