Rehab hospital recognized for work in wound care
Thursday October 18, 2007 -- Jason Thompson
Dr. Morty Eisenberg says the traditional method of treating and preventing wounds is out of date and he’s encouraging healthcare organizations to consider using the advanced wound care program that’s in place at St. John’s Rehab Hospital in Toronto.

Based on best-practices, the advanced wound care program at St. John’s Rehab Hospital has been named as one of five finalists for the 2007 rL Solutions Canadian Healthcare Excellence in Quality Award (CHEQA).

The awards are a joint initiative between rL Solutions, a company that develops software for healthcare organizations, and the Quality Healthcare Network (QHN).

“I think it’s a great honour,” says Eisenberg, the hospitalist division head at St. John’s Rehab Hospital, a Healthcare Insurance Reciprocal of Canada (HIROC) subscriber.

“I’ve been working on this for quite awhile now and I’m very pleased.”

As a rehab hospital, patients admitted to St. John’s are seeking treatment for a wide-variety of ailments. Despite the different treatments, Eisenberg says the common factor among those patients is wounds.

“One of the main objectives is for us to set a standard and become a world-class facility in wound care,” he says.

A number of years ago, Eisenberg started hearing about a new way to treat wounds which contradicted conventional methods.

“One's instinct would be to keep a wound clean and dry maybe put a little antiseptic on it to prevent infection,” Eisenberg says. “For the average person who has no healing problem, it’s OK, but if you’ve got somebody with a borderline wound, it may or may not heal if they’re diabetic or if they’ve got circulation problems.”

Eisenberg says treating these types of wounds in the traditional manner is exactly the wrong way to go about it.

“The way to treat these wounds is through moist wound healing — in other words they are kept wet,” he says.

Some of the problems when treating wounds the conventional way include having to treat and re-dress the wound a couple of times a day. Dressings can also dry on the wound becoming painful to remove and can sometimes interfere with the healing process.

Following the advanced wound care process, wounds are often treated with a gel to retain moisture and a “fancy” foam dressing is used to help balance the moisture. The foam dressing only needs to be changed once every two or three days.

“It’s much more comfortable for the patient and it saves the hospital a fair bit in terms of nursing care (because) you’re not having to change dressings twice a day every day,” Eisenberg says.

“Home care is set up to continue with this method of treatment after patients are discharged home,” he adds. “It is difficult for nurses in the community to go into homes twice a day to change dressings.”

Eisenberg argues this saves the system money because chronic wounds that would persist, for years in some cases, are now healing much quicker.

“Clearly patient outcomes have improved, it’s better for the patient,” he says.

The results of a point prevalence study conducted prior to introducing the advanced wound care process showed the prevalence of pressure ulcers in about 21 per cent of patients at St. John’s Rehab Hospital, which Eisenberg says is a little better than the Canadian average.

A second point prevalence study was conducted 11 months later and showed a pressure ulcer prevalence rate of 13 per cent.

“Granted they were done by two different groups, but they were supposed to be using the same criteria, and there was a significant reduction in pressure ulcer prevalence,” Eisenberg says. “That tells us right away that we’re on the right track.”

For more information on the advanced wound care project, click here.