How wellbeing affects wound care
What is a wound? And why is wellbeing important to wound care? Is a wound holding you back from living the life you want?
A wound is any damage on the surface of your skin. It can be accidental—like a burn or a skin tear. People that are less mobile, have poor circulation and incontinence are at higher risk of skin breaking down and developing a chronic wound. A chronic wound is a wound that takes longer to heal.
People with diabetes, heart disease, obesity and kidney disease are also at greater risk of chronic wounds. It is very important that skin is kept as healthy as possible to avoid chronic wounds such as pressure injuries (sores) or leg ulcers.
How wellbeing affects wound care
Wellbeing is important because your healing and overall health can be affected if your wellbeing is not at the right level. Wellbeing affects all areas of your life and can be loosely divided into four areas:
- Physical: The ability to function independently in activities such as bathing, dressing, eating and moving around
- Social: The ability to participate and engage with family, society, friends and workers
- Psychological: Free from fear, anxiety, stress, depression and other negative emotions
- Spiritual: the ability to experience and integrate meaning and purpose in life through connections and others
Your state of wellbeing across these areas can affect many things, including your:
- Ability to look after yourself
- Ability to cope
- Happiness and contentedness with life
- Wound healing progress
- Financial and family stability
What’s next?
Independence Australia stocks a range of hydrocolloid dressings products.
Don’t let a wound get in the way of your goals
From 1 October 2019, the NDIS now includes more health supports that are related to your disability. This means the NDIS will now pay for health supports such as wound and pressure care because some people have wounds or are at risk of getting one.
Wound and pressure care supports include:
- Development of a care plan by a suitably qualified and competent clinician.
- Wound care and pressure care (including pressure injury management) by an NDIS-funded, suitably qualified and competent worker.
- Training of support workers/families in prevention of pressure areas and wounds. Wound care and pressure care consumables (e.g. dressings, gauze, bandages, tape, lymphoedema garments and pressure wraps).
- Provision of assistive technology as required due to a participant’s disability, to prevent pressure areas/wounds occurring.
- Devices to help manage lymphoedema as well as assistance with the use of the equipment and the training of an NDIS-funded suitably qualified and competent worker to use the machine.
Physical health is never just about our body. It’s our mind, our feelings and our ambitions. When something holds our health and wellbeing back, it’s our whole life on hold.
More Wound Care Advice
Looking for more tips on managing wound care? Check out our wide range of health tips from leading health professionals.
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