While many wounds heal soon after they are treated at the hospital, some wounds take a bit longer to heal. Fortunately, if you have a non-healing or chronic wound, Methodist Hospitals’ Wound Care Center, located at its Southlake and Northlake campuses, can help.
This Wound Care Center treats ailments such as burns, pressure ulcers, venous leg ulcers, arterial leg ulcers, diabetic foot ulcers, tissue damage from radiation treatment, non-healing surgical wounds, and more.
Because Methodist Hospitals has an advanced wound care center, it is able to go beyond the typical methods of wound care and offer treatments such as Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy, Negative Pressure Wound Therapy, and Advanced Cellular and Tissue Based Products . If patients’ wounds have not healed within 30 days, they may become a candidate for Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy to speed up the healing process.
“Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy is a commitment for patients. They come five days a week, Monday through Friday, and they go in the chamber for about two to two and a half hours depending on the wound type,” said Kelly Elder, MSN, RN, area program director of Wound Care Centers.
This frequent, increased exposure to oxygen can help patients recover from arterial wounds, diabetic foot ulcers, radiation wounds, and other wounds.
“We can do skin substitutes which can be made of so many varieties,” Elder said. “There are all kinds out there, anywhere from animal skin substitutes to human amnio skin substitutes. It's a layer that we put on the patient's skin that incorporates into their wound bed to help them heal.”
Regardless of the type of treatment a patient needs, the Wound Care Center staff at both the Southlake and Northlake campuses work together with patients and each other.
“We do everything as a partnership. We work really hard together because we have to have everything in optimal condition for us to use any of these advanced modalities and therapies with them,” Elder said.
In March, the Wound Care Center at the Southlake Campus received RestorixHealth’s National Clinical Distinction Award, and both the Southlake and Northlake Campuses received the Patient Satisfaction Award. Many of the Wound Care Center staff members have been providing wound care for over 17 years, leveraging their experience to establish trust, and build the relationships with providers and patients required to run such a highly successful Wound Care Center.
“We have an amazing staff of nurses and physicians here that have been doing wound care for 17 plus years,” Elder said. “We do everything we can to make the patients comfortable, and they basically become family to us once they come through the doors. When they complete their treatment we have a bell that we ring, and it's a celebration of healing when they leave us. They know that if they ever need us, they can call us back.”
To learn more about Methodist Hospitals’ Wound Care Center, visit https://methodisthospitals.org/services/wound-care/.
