Authors (including presenting author) :
Ngan HL
Affiliation :
Stoma and Wound Care Service, United Christian Hospital
Introduction :
According to past incidents reported by HA Risk Alert, retention of dressing material was one of the most common incidents related to wound packing. Therefore, we need to remind our colleagues to have good practices and make a recommendation to reduce the risk of incidents.
Objectives :
(1) To increase the awareness of clear documentation on the number of wound packing materials packed and removed from the wound after any procedure related to wound dressing
(2) To reinforce the technique of wound packing to avoid the risk of retention
(3) To evaluate the standard of current practice and identify areas for improvement.
Methodology :
To organize the seminars on “Clinical update on wound packing” in within the cluster. To share the incidents from Risk Alert and update recommendations on wound packing. In addition, To perform a clinical audit on wound packing in the hospital.
Result & Outcome :
A webinar session on " Clinical update on wound packing" followed by a briefing session on clinical audit on wound packing was held on November 2021 with 162 attendances. A nursing audit on wound packing had been conducted in December 2021. A total of 115 nurses were audited from 6 departments. The overall result was satisfactory with a 99.87% compliance rate. However, two critical items are: “Check the number of packing material from the previous record and correlate the number of removed packing material” and “Check the integrity of the removed packing material and ensure no packing material is retained”. There was one case of wound packing that was removed by a Patient Care Assistant (PCA) before the procedure, but the auditee did not clarify with the PCA the number and the integrity of the packing removed. Another auditee failed to secure the dressing material at peri-wound skin with proper material, for example, steri-strip. It was recommended to promote the knowledge on wound packing and carry out the audit constantly e.g every 2 years.
