Chronic wounds, such as pressure ulcers, vascular ulcers, and diabetic ulcers, continue to be a serious health concern in the United States. Millions of Americans are affected each year, with total cost of their care reaching billions of dollars. Once a wound heals, which may take years for some patients, the chance of recurrence is high. Venous ulcers, for example, have recurrence rates approaching 70%.
Management of patients with wounds can present a considerable challenge for several reasons: (1) the lack of a research base for many aspects of wound care, (2) the proliferation of products used to treat wounds, (3) the lack of taxonomy for describing and documenting wounds, and (4) the need for more education on skin and wound care in medical and nursing schools.
It is important, therefore, for skin and wound care practitioners to be able to turn to timely credible and authoritative sources of information on skin and wound management. Advancesin Skin & Wound Care is now entering its 21st year of successfully providing this essential information to practitioners.
In 2009, Advances in Skin & Wound Care will again provide peer-reviewed continuing education articles for its readers on a regular basis. Research done by the journal's editorial staff indicates that busy wound care practitioners highly value access to earning continuing education credits through distance learning educational models. In response, our journal will provide this critical need through practical educational-based thought and content articles addressing the core principles and practices of wound management.
Richard "Sal" Salcido, MD, the journal's editor-in-chief, is an acknowledged authority on wound management, as are the journal's clinical associate editors, Elizabeth A. Ayello, PhD, RN, ACNS-BC, ETN, FAPWCA, FAAN, and R. Gary Sibbald, BSc, MD, FRCPC (Med) (Derm), FAPWCA, MEd. They will work with the journal's expert Editorial Advisory Board to select papers for the continuing education activity. These papers will focus on synthesizing existing research and accepted practice standards into key recommendations for day-to-day management of patients with wounds.
In addition, each year, the journal's editorial staff will conduct surveys of the journal's readership to determine topics of interest for future issues. In 2008, our readers expressed that the factors they deem critical to wound care include improving quality of care, keeping informed of new products, clinical practice guidelines, new procedures and techniques, latest research findings, innovations in practice, working on a multidisciplinary team, and reimbursement.
Throughout 2008, Advances in Skin & Wound Care published a number of articles and columns that addressed the changes in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement regulations for pressure ulcers. Articles, such as "Using Gene Transcription Patterns (Bar Coding Scans) to Guide Wound Debridement and Healing," discuss new ways to use current technology.
Searches of the current literature will also be done periodically. The results of the surveys and the literature searches will be shared with Dr Salcido, Dr Ayello, Dr Sibbald, and the board to assist them in topic selection and to ensure that the journal is meeting the informational needs of its readership.