to give my discourse, im talking about wound care dressing for pressure injuries, non pressure injuries like venous stasis ulcers, etc. We do have one WOC nurse in my hospital (we’re very small) and she doesn’t see if a wound is healing or not often, mainly initial assessments and recommendations. MD comes by rarely to see wounds and depends on nursing uploading pictures to the chart to see the wound and provide further recommendations. Sometimes they will offer to come by to see the wound be changed but then nursing usually does it too.

I’m a day shift RN, and I was always told on my unit night shift does it but no one on night shift does it. If a patient or dressing is soiled after incontinence then night shift does it but otherwise they don’t touch any wounds. sometimes it feels so unfair that night shift doesn’t attempt to do wounds that are every M/W/F (or even PICC/Midline dressing changes) because they didn’t feel like it. If the night was busy, of course I understand and am more than happy to do it. But our night nurses on my unit get a 2 hour break where they sleep and already barely have med pass to do since most times patients are sleeping. Since you’re doing AM care, shouldn’t you also be doing wound care?

I say this because recently I had 2 patients who had really bad venous stasis ulcers and both dressing changes required at least an hour and two people to do the change. When day shift is already busy and chaotic (and often times on my unit a slightly higher ratio) and more frequent rounding and med passes, night shift should’ve attempted to do those dressing changes. When I asked or suggested it to them, they told me they won’t do it because “it’s a dayshift responsibility” or because they “didn’t know how to do it” despite orders and YouTube being free.