Abstract
Background
The care of individuals with a fungating malignant wound represents challenging cancer
management not only for patients and their families but also for health care professionals.
Understanding the difficulties faced by nurses when they care for patients with such
a wound can help guide practice and service development. The aim of this study was
to investigate how many patients with a malignant fungating wounds did nurses see
and what kind of difficulties in caring for patients with a malignant fungating wound
did nurses experience.
Method
A survey was conducted in three different geographical regions of Switzerland over
a 6 month period.
Results
A total of 269 nurses participated in this survey. The nurses reported the prevalence
rate of fungating wounds as 6.6%. There was a difference in perceived prevalence between
the regions. The most frequent location for such wounds was the breast in women with
breast cancer. The appearance was mainly ulcerating. The main difficulties nurses
experienced in the management of patients related to malodour, pain and difficulties
in applying the dressings to the wound. The most frequently used dressing was an absorbent
dressing. The difficulties nurses had and what kind of dressings they used were closely
connected.
Conclusions and implications for practice
Strategies need to be explored to help understand the diverse range of wound problems
including physical and psychological components. Furthermore, there is a need to raise
the awareness of existing wound management specialists in the support of cancer patients.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: April 23, 2009
Accepted:
March 20,
2009
Received in revised form:
March 6,
2009
Received:
November 24,
2008
Identification
Copyright
© 2009 Elsevier Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
