EP343 patients receiving wound care at home: complex or not complex?

Aim: Home care nurses request Clinical Nurse Specialist intervention (CNSI) when they encounter difficulties in complex situations. Over 40% of these CNSI request reasons involve wounds. The objective was to examine 1) whether home care patients receiving wound care are more complex than those not receiving wound care, and 2) whether wound care patients with CNSI are more complex than wound care patients without CNSI.Method: Data from 4885 adults receiving home care were collected with the HCSuisse interRAI (resident assessment instrument for home care) and COMID (multidimensional complexity assessment) during the second half of 2021. Available CNSI information on wounds was matched. Analyses were chi-square comparisons.Results / Discussion: Of 4885 patients, 10.7% of the sample (N=524) had received wound care in the past 3 days. Complex situations were more common in patients with wound care (30.3%) than in those without (21.3%; Χ2=22.088, p<.001). Among the 524 patients with wound care, a CNSI was required for 13.7% (N=72). Complex situations were not significantly more frequent for patients with CNSI request (30.6%) than for patients without (30.3%; Χ2=0.002, p=.966).Conclusion: First, because patients receiving wound care are more complex, it would be interesting to further study their profile, not only in terms of complexity, but also in terms of frailty. Second, given that no significant difference in complexity was noted between situations with and without CNSI requests, it would be interesting to understand the reasons for these requests and may provide insight into potential training needs for home care nurses.