Wound Care: A Common, Often Stressful Family Caregiving Task

“Teaching Wound Care to Family Caregivers” is currently one of AJN‘s most-viewed articles. As the article points out, more than one-third of family caregivers have to perform wound care, and doing so at home “can be a stressful experience.”

In a recent study of the challenges faced by family caregivers, 35% of those sampled reported performing wound care. Importantly, 66% of these caregivers indicated that wound care was difficult for them. For almost half, fear of making mistakes or causing harm was even more of a concern than the time and inconvenience of providing wound care….

The CARE Act mandates family caregiver teaching.

A nurse teaches a family caregiver how to assess a diabetic foot ulcer and safely change the dressing. Photo courtesy of the AARP Public Policy Institute.

This article is part of a series, Supporting Family Caregivers: No Longer Home Alone, published in collaboration with the AARP Public Policy Institute. Some other topics covered in the series include managing mobility and fall risk in the home, managing complex medication regimens, administering injections, and others.

As AJN editor-in-chief Shawn Kennedy wrote in a December 2017 editorial, a recent “groundswell of attention” to the needs of family caregivers resulted in the Caregiver Advise, Record, Enable (CARE) Act (now law in 39 states), “which mandates that hospitals identify, coordinate discharge with, and provide care instructions to the person who will provide care at home for a patient upon hospital discharge.”

Articles include how-to videos designed for family caregivers.

Each article in the current series includes a tip sheet that nurses can tear out and give to caregivers. The tips review key points and include links to instructional videos, which are available to caregivers on AARP’s Home Alone Alliance site in both English and Spanish and can also be accessed on AJN’s website.

Is your hospital doing enough to ready family caregivers for wound care and other tasks they are likely to face when a patient goes home? Where do the challenges lie?