Date of Award

2022

Document Type

Project

College/School

College of Nursing

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Project Mentor

Therry Eparwa

Readers

Maura Caroll

Abstract

Problem: Venous ulcer wounds are commonly managed in outpatient clinics by providers in conjunction with nurses; however, lack of wound care knowledge and evidenced-based wound care management among nurses make providing effective care challenging and difficult. Known as stasis ulcer, venous ulcer accounts for 80 percent of lower extremity ulcerations and its incidence increases with age and recurrence is quite common. These wounds can be challenging to treat, often taking at least four to six weeks to heal, and often requiring long-term therapeutics for optimal healing and reoccurrence prevention. Venous ulcer wounds are an important medical problem with substantial economic effects that can adversely impact patients’ quality of life and significantly increasing morbidity and financial burden. Intervention: Eligible primary care nurses viewed a venous ulcer wound care education video. The project focused on educating nurses on venous ulcer etiology and characteristics, wound care assessment, wound debridement and management, dressing selection and guidelines, and the critical principle of wound care. Measures: A pre- and posttest assessment measured any changes to knowledge and confidence in providing evidence-based venous ulcer wound care among primary care nurses. Data analysis was completed using a mean value, paired t-test, and ANOVA testing. Results & Conclusion: Overall, the mean value of all responses from the pre- to the posttest survey increased by 8.29%, indicating a positive impact of the intervention. Primary care nurse confidence in venous ulcer management had a paired t-test P-value of 0.0431. ANOVA tests were run to measure the correlation between years of nursing experience and average confidence level in providing venous ulcer wound care. The pretest analysis showed a statistically significant correlation between experience and confidence. However, this phenomenon disappeared upon analysis of posttest data. These results indicate that the education intervention was effective in increasing their overall confidence in providing venous ulcer wound care management, especially for nurses with fewer years of experience.

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