Point prevalence of wounds in a sample of acute hospitals in Canada.

To provide new information on wound prevalence and the potential resource impact of non healing wounds in the acute sector by summarising results from wound audits carried out at 13 acute hospitals in Canada in 2006 and 2007. Audits were carried out in each hospital by the same independent team of advanced practice nurses using standard data-collection forms. The results reported here were derived from the summary reports for each hospital. A total of 3099 patients were surveyed (median 259 patients per hospital). In the sample hospitals, the mean prevalence of patients with wounds was 41.2%. Most wounds were pressure ulcers (56.2%) or surgical wounds (31.1%). The mean prevalence of pressure ulcers was 22.9%. A majority of pressure ulcers (79.3%) were hospital-acquired, and 26.5% were severe (Stage III or IV). The rate of surgical wound infection was 6.3%. Forty-five percent of patients had dressings changed at least daily and the mean dressing time was 10.5 minutes. Wounds are a common and potentially expensive occurrence in acute hospitals. Any wound has the potential to develop complications which compromise patient safety and increase hospital costs. Ensuring consistent, best-practice wound management programmes should be a key priority for hospital managers.