A Fact A Day- Wound Bed Preparation

Download A Fact A Day – Wound Bed Preparation and share it within your facility. This two-page fact sheet was created to support staff education on preparing the wound bed for proper healing. The print-friendly format is perfect for posting on the bulletin board or distributing to your nursing staff at in-service.

Terms to know: Wound Bed Preparation

Bacterial load/burden: Presence of bacterial pathogens in an open wound contributing to wound chronicity and persistence of inflammatory cycle. There are several points along the spectrum of bacterial presence in chronic wounds: contamination, colonization, critical colonization, infection, and sepsis.

Debridement: The procedural act of removing non-viable tissue, along with any debris, from the wound. There are multiple debridement modalities, some of which are selective for non-viable tissue and some which are non-selective (viable tissue is removed as well, e.g., mechanical debridement with gauze sponges): sharp (conservative or excisional/surgical), mechanical, autolytic, enzymatic/chemical, and biological.