Our Work
Empowering Nurses, Engaging Patients: Making Shared Wound Care Work in the Real World
“We transformed our clinical concept into real world evidence pilots at lightning speed by bringing together Key Opinion Leaders, developing our action plan, and socialising results faster than we ever imagined possible”
Marketing Manager, Chronic Wound Care
Smith+Nephew, a global medical technology company and manufacturer of wound care needed support to change the behaviour of nurses to incorporate a shared wound care model. While the concept of shared wound care, was gaining traction, it was putting it into practice remained a challenge.
Clinicians were open to the idea but unsure how to implement it safely and compliantly, whilst patients, lacked the tools or confidence to take an active role.
The Challenge
Together with Smith+Nephew, we led a two-day hackathon-style advisory board, bringing together nurses who influence wound care policy across the UK. These sessions revealed a strong appetite for change. Using insights from the hackathon, our challenge was to co-create tools that would empower clinicians and enable patients to engage confidently with their own wound management.
A set of insight driven toolkits were developed to help overcome the barriers and empower clinicians and patients to succeed with shared care.
The professional toolkit was built around the insight that nurses were worried about being compliant engaging in shared care. As we understood from the Hackathon, nurses CAN engage with shared care but many don’t know this. It provided step-by-step guidance on delivering shared care compliantly, equipping clinicians with tools, templates and conversation prompts to use in practice.
In parallel, we launched a patient toolkit which was relatable and empowering and encouraged patients to adopt a wound care diary and a goal-setting work sheet which was validated in a patient focus group.
The Impact
From a promising concept into an actionable programme, the campaign transformed how wound care is being delivered across pilot clinics. Early feedback shows increased clarity and confidence in delivering shared care by nurses as well as high usage of the toolkit by patients.
Shared care isn’t just an idea anymore, it’s becoming reality in the world of wound care.