Caring for patients with chronic wounds is a significant challenge, involving clinicians from a wide range of areas of medicine with different levels of education.

To make the very complex processes of diagnosis and treatment of these patients understandable, different models are available to the health care professionals.

The T.I.M.E concept (tissue, infection, moisture, edge), published in 2003, and expanded to TIMERS in 2018 (including regeneration of tissue, social factors) is undoubtedly at the center of attention.

As a guide for local therapy of chronic wounds, Wund-D.A.CH., the umbrella organization of German-speaking wound healing societies, also provided M.O.I.S.T. presented a new concept for local treatment of chronic wounds.

All these concepts serve to illustrate the highly complex, interdisciplinary process of wound healing and to create a uniform nomenclature for the treatment of these wounds.

The CoopMed wound model is true to these models and very visualizes merely the most critical steps in the care of people with hard-to-heal / chronic wounds.

The keys to effectively heal wounds are well-educated health care professionals able to diagnose the wound and patient-related factors like

• Malnutrition
• Cardiovascular disorders
• Medication (e.g., non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, corticosteroids)
• Obesity
• Microbial colonization of the wound
• Systemic disorders (e.g., diabetes, autoimmune conditions)
• Unrelieved pressure on the wound
• Maceration due to excess wound exudate or other moisture
• Inappropriate wound management
• Patient compliance with the wound care regimen
• Immobility

Based on that diagnose, nurses will formulate a treatment plan ,including indication-specific essential focus options where needed, like offloading for Diabetic Foot Ulcers or compression for Venous Leg Ulcers, not to mention:

• Fighting critical barriers to wound healing such as Necrotic tissue, slough, bacteria, biofilm, virus, infections, and multidrug resistance organisms
• Accelerating healing of stalled wounds by using active ingredients

Infection Control is a major and very important focus area of any institution, and within healthcare, it is often referred to as HAI; Hospital-Acquired Infections (or nosocomial infections), meaning infections acquired specifically at the hospital/healthcare setting, or as the slightly broader term Healthcare-Associated Infections. In our model, we have chosen a broader understanding of infections related to healthcare.

Infection Control Management certainly needs to focus on clean hands, gloves, surgical gowns, clean surgical rooms, equipment, and wards – surfaces – clean surgical tools, but also medical devices that hold the risk of transporting bacteria or virus into the body.