From the Editor: A Year Of Adaptation

  It is hard to accept that this year is already coming to a close. I never wanted to acknowledge or believe that time seems to goes faster as you get older but I’m afraid it is true. SAWC Fall in Las Vegas came and went in a flurry, and it was a success beyond expectations with more than 1,100 participants joining us this year. I think that the Wound Clinic Track played a large role in that! Perhaps, though, it is just the nature of our business and the wonderful community that wound healing brings that enables us to be as involved and busy as we want to be or have time to be depending on where we are in our life’s activities. For me my year was one of learning acceptance and adaptation after losing my husband in January; feats I could not have accomplished without the love and support I received from not only my personal family and friends but certainly my professional family and friends!

  As we bring you the last issue of the year, it again is one worthy of reading cover to cover, and one that ties in so wonderfully to the nature of our special wound healing world. Our specialty is one of dealing with extremes in quality of life issues, pain management, encounters of a very personal nature, and diseases and treatments that impact work and social lives. It is also, as we all know, a specialty of a growing level of science, but also one that requires a great deal of art as we interpret and implement that science. Wound healing and wound care also is frequently grounded in experience, which generates a gut level of decision making. As we continue in the journey of medicine examining quality and outcomes, the “science” side of the equation related to some of the fundamental aspects of wound care will need to be examined to assure that a practice is “measuring up”. The ultimate goal is of course excellence in patient care, but the ability to save healthcare dollars is the expectation, hence “Payment for Performance”. We measure up or it costs us dollars. To that end, Dr. Caroline Fife has an excellent piece trying to help us unravel the knot of Measuring Quality in Wound Care. And then lastly, quality as it pertains to the government is one thing, but quality as it is sensed by our patients is another. If we have happy, satisfied and healed patients, we will also have very satisfied and happy referral sources in the community. Pam Unger, PT, CWS has addressed this part of quality as she looked at improving patient satisfaction.

  In her Business Briefs article Kathleen Schaum performs her usual miracle in making sense of just one of the new coding changes for 2012, those related to the use of Bioengineered Tissues.

  Now last but not least, is Tom Serena’s Challenges piece in this issue; It is, in my opinion a must read, probably because it hit me particularly close to home as I had both of my parents in the emergency department of the same hospital on two consecutive Mondays in October. I was particularly annoyed because of the seemingly non-attention paid by the emergency physicians; my parents were getting tests, and diagnoses were made and admissions followed, but most all of our information came from the nursing staff and stuff just “happened”. Reading about the “ipatient” made me at least put it in perspective. But it also circled me back to the fact that while wound healing is both science and art, and an important part of that art is it is the personal care and attention to the details of the patient, their history and lifestyle that enable us to provide the quality. And I like that.

  And by the way, Tom’s son David did well and is fine now.

  So on behalf of Caroline Fife and me as your Clinical Editors, the entire Editorial Board, and the staff at HMP Communications we wish you a very restful and safe Holiday Season, and hope that you all get to spend it with those that are most important to you.