“We get to see wound, body and spirit healing results in our patients and their families. There is nothing more satisfying than having a patient return in his shiny, new, red, up-to-date wheelchair looking happy to be healthy and smiling profusely as all the staff greets a member of our Kindred family.”


– Donna Crossland, MSN, RN, CWOCN, wound care coordinator


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Kindred Hospital Melbourne uses MIST Therapy to treat wounds. This advanced technology accelerates healing through a low frequency ultrasound.


Resources and education that the KHM staff “It is one of several tools we have in our bag


of treatments that include Negative Pressure Wound Therapy with either gauze or sponge application, and Pulsed Lavage, a more up-to- date debridement therapy replacing whirlpool in- wound management,” she explains. The newly opened surgical suite, under the


guidance of Clyde Blaylock, RN, OR manager, and local general and plastic surgeons with privileges at KHM, affords the hospital opportunities to prepare a patient’s wound bed for potential surgical repair to be done on site as a continuum of care. A fragile patient will no longer have to be transferred to a short-term acute care facility for a surgical intervention such as surgical debridement, a skin graft or skin flap. Crossland coordinates KHM’s in-patient wound


care program. Originally from Massachusetts, she arrived in Florida in January of 2004 “along with three hurricanes,” she jokes. Crossland developed a wound care and pressure ulcer prevention program at Health First’s Cape Canaveral Hospital in Cocoa Beach and ultimately became an initial part of the start-up team for Kindred Healthcare, Inc.’s long-term acute care hospital in Melbourne in 2009.


Crossland received her wound care specialized


training in wound ostomy and continence nursing at Emory University in Atlanta in 1999. Her connection to Emory’s wound program affords KHM the opportunity to host WOCN students for precepting a highly specialized tri- specialty of nursing. Melbourne also is a site for orientation of new wound care coordinators for Kindred hospitals across the southeast.


ADVANCED WOUND CARE: A CASE STUDY Recalcitrant pressure-related wounds on a


quadriplegic’s seating anatomy is one illustration of a patient admitted to KHM recently. A young man in his 30s with 17 pressure-related open wounds on his torso and legs was admitted for evaluation and specialty wound care. During his six-week stay, his wounds were cleaned and treated using advanced wound care science, as well as incorporating his family, lifestyle and quality of life needs. Specialty pressure reduction surfaces and bed, coordinated wound care, products and biological material that augments the natural wound healing process provided the patient with 80 to 90 percent healing by the time he was discharged.


provided the patient and his family assured him a future quality of life. One example of this is the wheelchair being used by the patient had been issued to the patient 13 years earlier. It was in poor repair and totally insufficient for his current needs. It actually was the cause of some of the chronic and recalcitrant wounds. Physical therapist Kerston Kerton, DPT, initiated and synchronized the issuance of a new wheelchair complete with special seating, tilting capabilities and hand controls to afford pressure relief and mobility. “There are exceptional rewards to working with patients in long-term acute care,” says Crossland. “The length of stay is several weeks rather than the several days of short-term acute care. We get to see wound, body and spirit healing results in our patients and their families. There is nothing more satisfying than having a patient return in his shiny, new, red, up-to-date wheelchair looking happy to be healthy and smiling profusely as all the staff greets a member of our Kindred family.”


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