Volume 40 Number 3

The Need for Evidence and Education Continues 

As this year continues to evolve, the need for trusted evidence and education upon which nursing practice is to be based has become more and more evident. In this celebratory year of the nurse and midwife, COVID-19 has had a profound impact on nursing. A recent document by the International Council of Nurses (ICN) “provides a snapshot on how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting the global nursing workforce... nurses are at the frontline of the response to the virus, are central to successful progress in suppressing it, and will be the mainstay of post COVID-19 health system”^1(p.2).

Along with the rest of world, the WCET^® once again wants to acknowledge and applaud the tremendous efforts that all our members and colleagues have done so far. Nursing’s role has unfortunately come at a cost. We do not know all the names of those who have become sick or passed away, but our thoughts of caring are extended to all of you and your families. “Nurses have fallen ill or died, often because of poor provision of personal protective equipment (PPE), and many others are experiencing work related stress and burnout”^1(p.2).

As nurses around the world are caring for patients with COVID-19 as well as trying to protect their own faces from device-related skin injuries from protective equipment, just-in-time and accurate information is very necessary. The WCET^® has provided a dedicated section on our website devoted to COVID-19. It is available at: https://wocet.memberclicks.net/free-covid-19-educational-resources. The WCET^® hopes that this will be an important educational resource for you. As the ICN and others have identified the clinical problem of skin injuries from wearing masks, facial skin protection has taken on new urgency. As part of the WCET®’s agreement with the international, inter-professional journal Advances in Skin and Wound Care, we are pleased to print an article by Hiske Smart, Associate Editor, International Inter-Professional Wound Care Group (IIWCG) for our WCET^® Journal. Ms Smart and her colleagues from Bahrain report the data and outcomes of a quality improvement project about protecting nurses’ faces under N95 masks. We hope this database article will truly help nurses ‘save face’.

All WCET® members received an email invitation to review and comment on the International Ostomy Guidelines (IOG) 2020. Jen Wood received 163 signed confidentially agreements and these people were sent the confidential draft of the IOG 2020 to do a peer review. The WCET^® is delighted with the number of responses received. Of those, 125 completed the online SurveyMonkey IOG 2020 assessment tool. The WCET^® thanks everyone who returned their comments by the due date. Along with Jenny Prentice, we will use this peer review feedback to revise and finalise the IOG 2020. Having sponsored the 2014 original guideline, the WCET® is once again grateful to Hollister^® for the educational grant to fund the development of the IOG 2020.

While, due to COVID-19, our in-person 2020 WCET^® Joint Congress with ASCN-UK in Glasgow, Scotland has been postponed until 3–6 October 2021, the need for ongoing education continues. In fact, the very foundation of the WCET^® is built on educating nurses globally. We can all gather virtually, beginning on 28 October for the first WCET® Worldwide Education Day. Denise Hibbert, the WCET^® Education Committee Chair, and her taskforce that includes Alison Crawshaw, Dee Waugh, Greg Paull and Jen Wood have planned an exciting day of presentations from distinguished speakers from around the world. This will begin with the keynote address entitled Skin, the organ that binds us together by faculty from three different continents – Ms Aihua (Alice) Chen from China, Dr R Gary Sibbald from Canada, and Mr Laurent Chabal from Switzerland. The session will cover how skin is an essential and important concept for all wound, ostomy and incontinence nurses. Whatever your practice is, given the range of topics within each of our tri-specialty of wounds, ostomies and incontinence, there is something for everyone in this program.

Thanks to the generous support of webinar sponsors – in alphabetical order, Calmoseptine^®, Coloplast, ConvaTec, Eakin Healthcare Group^® and Hollister^® – this webinar is free to WCET^® members. Don’t worry if you are working on that date and therefore are unable to view this educational program. You will be able to access this webinar on-demand up till 30 November 2020. Tell your non-WCET^® colleagues that they can register for this webinar for a nominal fee of £35 which then includes WCET^®  membership until 31 December 2021. Since education was so important to our founder Norma N Gill and, in honour of her 100th birthday, look for a special surprise for webinar participants!

The WCET^® looks forward to seeing you virtually for now until we see you again in person at the joint WCET^® ASCN-UK congress in Glasgow, Scotland. Watch for an email with details about submitting your congress abstract and registration information. Till then, stay well and keep on nursing.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth A Ayello
PhD, RN, ETN, CWON, MAPWCA, FAAN
WCET^® President 2018–2020

Laurent O Chabal
BSc (CBP), RN, OncPall (Cert), Dip (WH), ET, EAWT
WCET^® Vice President 2018–2020

Author(s)

Elizabeth A Ayello
PhD, RN, ETN, CWON, MAPWCA, FAAN
WCET® President 2018–2020

Laurent O Chabal
BSc (CBP), RN, OncPall (Cert), Dip (WH), ET, EAWT
WCET® Vice President 2018–2020

Gulnaz Tariq
President, International Inter-Professional Wound Care Group (IIWCG)

References

1. International Council of Nurses (lead author Professor Janes Buchan and contributing author Howard Catton, ICN CEO). COVID-19 and the international supply of nurses. Geneva Switzerland: ICN; 2020.

IIWCG and wuwhs news

In Abu Dhabi, UAE, the COVID-19 situation has impacted the International Inter-Professional Wound Care Group (IIWCG) society on many levels. The world cycling tour in Abu Dhabi, a week or two before the World Union of Wound Healing Societies (WUWHS) 2020 conference was to occur, had one of the first COVID-19 cases in the UAE. That resulted in their hotel being placed into quarantine. The risk for the WUWHS conference delegates being placed into quarantine was too high. If one person tested positive as a result of international virus transmission at WUWHS, public health rules would have had to be followed. This would have meant that WUWHS congress delegates would have had to remain quarantined in UAE and as, worldwide, countries started going into lockdown, who knows if delegates could have gotten home.

The decision was therefore made to postpone the WUWHS conference to 1–5 March 2022. The hope is that this will allow enough time for the pandemic to stabilise or clear. The aim is to ensure the safety of the delegates, as well as preventing them from enforced quarantine periods associated with international travel. The Abu Dhabi government was very supportive of the WUWHS, with most funds returned to the conference organiser, and the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC) reserved for 2022 without penalty.

The IIWCG 12th Abu Dhabi Wound Care Conference is currently being planned to take place on 11–12 March 2021. The aim is to have local participants on site and international delegates joining via a virtual platform. This concept will be a test-run for the WUWHS 2022 conference to pilot, test and rule out difficulties associated with using a concurrent virtual and face-to-face conference concept. It is our hope that the pandemic would have stabilised sufficiently by that time, allowing full face-to-face meetings for both conferences to be possible.

Despite the changes and pandemic impact in the UAE, we managed to have a new intake of students for the International Inter-professional Wound Care Course (IIWCC) in March 2020. Fortunately, the first residential weekend could still safely go ahead as planned, with Drs Sibbald, Kothru and Ayello as the attending IIWCC faculty, before COVID-19 measures were implemented in the UAE. We thank them for coming to Abu Dhabi and were glad that they all got home safely.

We are more than halfway through this year and we know everyone is doing an incredible job of caring for patients. It is our sincere wish that everybody will remain safe in this pandemic that has surely taken the world by storm.

Gulnaz Tariq
President, International Inter-Professional Wound Care Group (IIWCG)