Holly Denton

Wound care practitioners are drawn from many different disciplines and cultural backgrounds, each with their own languages, dialects and professional jargons. However, such an international, interdisciplinary art and science requires a mutual understanding of agreed-on terms and definitions. This shared language is essential for wound care teams to communicate in daily practice, as well as to compare their clinical experience and research results at conferences and in publications. All of this will raise the quality of care and, ultimately, improve patient outcomes.

This harmonised glossary of terms builds on the work of others who have sought agreement on the language of wound healing. The authors of this project began with a review of published literature that sought to define terms used in wound care. They then synthesised the various definitions of similar terms, harmonising the often subtle differences between them. Terms are defined as they relate to wound care specifically. To ensure that these definitions would find common acceptance worldwide and across disciplines, an international panel of experts from differing fields was invited to review an initial draft of the glossary. The authors and panel held a consensus meeting, where they reached agreement on the harmonisation of terms. The result is this harmonised glossary, published in the Journal of Wound Care. It is circulated as part of the journal's author instructions to help standardise terminology across future submissions.

This glossary will be revisited every 2 years so that, where necessary, it can be amended to align with new research and updates to evidence-based practice. In that regard, should readers agree or disagree with any of the definitions or have suggestions or comments to improve future editions, the authors would welcome engagement. This will ensure the harmonised glossary of wound care terms becomes an evolving tool that everyone finds useful—the rarest of accolades when it comes to books.

Background: Insufficient wound care knowledge in nursing students affects confidence and competence. Scarce research on wound care content and delivery leads to curriculum disparities. Integrating essential content is vital for improved wound care education.

Aims: This study aimed to determine Australian wound care curriculum content for a 3-year Bachelor of Nursing program and identify the optimal year for introducing each topic, as recognised by experts.

Methodology: A three-round Delphi survey involved 17 wound care experts in Australia. The survey used the Standards for wound prevention and management to identify 74 wound care topics within the three categories of anatomy and physiology (A & P), assessment and treatment/therapies, requiring >70% agreement on the year of introduction for each topic.

Results: The Delphi process established consensus on the initial introduction year for 65 of the 74 wound care topics. A total of 19 topics garnered consensus exceeding 70% in the first year, 19 in the second year, 15 in the third year, and 12 for postgraduate study. Expert consensus enabled a progressive development of knowledge and skills in wound theory, assessment, care planning, patient education and prevention over the 3-year program.

Conclusion: The gathering of this data has allowed for conceptual scaffolding of these topics according to the stage at which wound care topics are recommended for introduction into nursing curricula.