Getting to grips with the standard
More than 2 million people in the UK suffer from chronic wounds, which cause pain and discomfort, and impact on an individual’s general wellbeing.
Treating wounds costs the NHS £5.3 billion a year, and it is nearly as costly as cancer care (£5.6 billion a year)*.
There is an inconsistent practice in UK wound care services, underuse of evidence-based practices and overuse of ineffective solutions. There is a need to improve wound care healing and prevention for people and use NHS resources more efficiently.
*https://pressureinjuryprevention.com/uk-wound-care-cost/
NHS England commissioned the National Wound Care Strategy Programme to reduce unwarranted variation in care and improve information sharing between clinical settings, professionals and patients.
Standardising generic information in the care record will support the delivery of wound care, including prevention, assessment and management of wounds, resulting in more effective practices.
The benefits
For
people
For healthcare
professionals
For
organisations
Exploring the standard
The Wound Care Standard includes the following components:
A treatment plan, which details what care is going to be delivered, over what timescales and to what effect, designed to meet the person’s preferences.
The treatment plan will be based on the Personalised Care and Support Plan Standard (PCSP), developed with the person to address their overall needs and goals.
Support for self-care and self-management, allowing the person to have access to wound care information and education documentation or to share images and documents with the care professional.
The wound care record is dependent on other parts of the care record such as information about the person’s demographics and ‘About Me’ information, previous and concurrent care and information about care professionals or carers involved in the care of the person.
Details of terminology (e.g SNOMED CT) are in the standard implementation guidance. Elements will have a coded item with the value sets showing SNOMED CT or other code system.
The full standard
You can view the full standard on the following page: Wound Care Standard – PRSB (theprsb.org).
Please use the links at the bottom of the standard page under “Current release” to view the 3 domains.
You will find the detailed implementation guidance in the information models, but it is also important to review the associated general implementation guidance and safety case available under supporting documents on the Wound Care Standard – PRSB (theprsb.org) webpage.
Please see Standards Explained for more information about how PRSB information standards are structured.
How to use the standard
The standard should be implemented in systems that your organisation is using to collect and access information about a person’s wound care. The content of this information is determined by the professional providing wound care and should be in accordance with the National Wound Care Strategy Programme.
Once the information standard has been implemented in your system, health and care professionals should be trained to use it correctly when co-producing or accessing a person’s information in their wound care record.
The information model for the Wound Care Standard includes different levels of conformance:
- Mandatory: the information must be included
- Required: if it exists, the information should be included
- Optional: a local decision is made as to whether the information is included.
How the standard fits with personalised care planning
A person’s wound care should ideally form part of their personalised care and support plan so that clinicians have a holistic view of the individual, the conditions for which they are being treated, and their needs and preferences.
The diagram below shows the wide range of different information that can be captured and should be considered as one holistic plan
PRSB Standards Explained
Why we need standards to record our health and care information in a consistent way so that it can be made available whenever it is needed.
Making change happen
Transformation programmes need clear goals, the right leadership and engaged staff and stakeholders. Get started by reading our information on transformational change.
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