Patient with skin injuries in home care: Advice from the expert wound care nurse. Define and standardize the process at a territorial level

There are many people in charge of the Home Care service in Trentino who have skin lesions, the interventions carried out during 2021 for their management were 51.291. The Service has 3 experienced nurses in wound care management with a master’s degree. To date, there is no uniform and official way of managing consultancy on their part; such supervision or advice is handled informally. The aim of this paper is to outline the contents, phases and activities of the consultancy process by the nurse expert in wound care for patients followed by the Home and Palliative Care Service of the Provincial Agency for Health Services of Trento (APSS). Structured interviews were conducted with expert nurses in Wound Care present in the Home and Palliative Care Service and with the Chief Nursing Informatics Officer (CNIO) Technology Department of the APSS. The interviews were conducted face-to-face and audio-recorded with the interviewees' permission. At the end of the transcription, the registrations were cancelled. The data processing was conducted in a way to ensure anonymity. Nurses experienced in wound care highlight these important issues: how counseling is requested and carried out, content of the counseling request, work planning, staff training/supervision, recognition of the role of the expert, guaranteeing time for counseling. The CNIO report how important a multi-professional team work is for the development of digital solutions that allow the traceability of the consultancy process and the collection of data with respect to the computerized process. Fundamental issues emerged for the development of counseling for patients in charge of the Home and Palliative Care Service of APSS such as the need to standardize the methods of requesting and providing counselling, documenting assistance, facilitating the continuity of information, measuring results in terms of process and result indicators. The expert wound care nurse acts at the organizational, professional and patient level.