Healing Our Wounds, Healing Our Families

Healing Our Wounds, Healing Our Families

Wounds are a common health problem that can impact everyone. Some wounds heal well on their own, while others can take a long time or even stop healing. Even minor wounds can become serious for certain people, leading to infection, disability, and death.

Wounds come in many forms. They may be caused by trauma, as in cuts, scrapes, punctures, and burns, or be the result of illness or some type of deficiency, such as poor nutrition, a lack of feeling in one or more areas of the body, or the inability to move. Conditions such as diabetes and poor blood flow can result in minor wounds that become major problems, particularly on the feet and legs. And we have all heard the stories about terrible pressure injuries (also known as bedsores) in vulnerable people in long-term care homes.

Severe, complicated, or slowhealing wounds have a significant impact on individuals, families, and healthcare systems. For individuals, some wounds may result in a significantly altered lifestyle, with loss of function, employment, and a normal social life. Families are impacted, too, with some family members becoming full-time caregivers.

Already overburdened health systems need to use more financial, human, and other resources in hospitals, rehab centres, and home care to treat slow-healing and complicated wounds.

With an aging population and increases in the numbers of Canadians who have conditions that increase their risk for complicated wounds, the problem is growing.

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?

At Wounds Canada, our mission is to ensure that every Canadian has access to the resources they need to help prevent and manage wounds. For more than 25 years, Wounds Canada, a charitable organization dedicated to the advancement of wound prevention and care in Canada, has become the country’s leading provider of reliable woundrelated resources.

We produce patient-friendly resources that families can use to protect their loved ones from getting the most common types of wounds and for managing them at home or with the assistance of a qualified healthcare professional. Our clinic directory lists facilities across the country that specialize in wounds. To access this free information, check out the patient and caregiver section of our website at www.woundscanada.ca/ patient-or-caregiver.

Some of our other initiatives to address wound care in Canada include:

• Awareness campaigns, often focusing on the challenges of wound patients

• Financial support for research and scholarship programs

• Education for healthcare providers on best practices for preventing and managing wounds

• Advising governments and lobbying them to prioritize wounds

We focus on many types of wounds, including pressure injuries, surgical wounds, diabetic foot ulcers, burns, traumatic wounds, and lowerleg ulcers. Please visit our website at woundscanada.ca to learn more.