Joyce's KP Adventure mikepasini.com headlines
A New RN With a New Approach
22 January 2021
Every month or so Joyce has to be visited by a registered nurse to confirm she still requires in-home nursing. Tyler the RN left the company earlier this month so it fell to Laura the RN to do the dressing change today and confirm care.
Laura texted last night to say she'd be filling in and would arrive at the usual time, between 9 and 10 a.m. and Joyce confirmed.
Sure enough, she was here just before 10. She took Joyce's vitals (which are always excellent) and then went about taking the old dressing off.
She did it quite differently from Tyler, Salwa and Toni, though.
When she noticed the dressing was adhering to the wound, she soaked it in saline solution to loosen it from the new tissue. She said the one thing you don't want to do is tear the new tissue growing underneath.
She also used a skin spray of some sort to moisten the area as she gradually lifted the old foam off the wound.
Then she applied three sheets of the Adaptic non-adhering dressing you see in the photo. It's a gauze-like material that is lubricated so it won't stick. She left a few extras for Salwa and said Salwa can get more from the office.
I wondered if that's the stuff Dr. Tong tried to order for the black foam. You do use it with black foam, Laura said.
Then she cut new white foam to fill the wound. I sympathized with how hard it is to cut the foam to shape. "Someone would probably get a Nobel Prize if they figured out an easier way to shape the foam," I said. And Laura immediately said she wished you could just spray the foam in like insulation.
I think she's half way to that Nobel.
Someone would also get a Nobel for inventing a drape that didn't have to be applied in three steps, too. But she got through that, then attached the lily pad, reinforced it and turned the Wound VAC back on.
Presto, we hit 125 and the pump was silent.
It took an hour but she did a great job. Nobody gets through this wound very quickly the first time. And it's fascinating to see how each person does it a bit differently.