Published November 2023. Next revision November 2028.
This guide supports health services to incorporate virtual care into how they deliver chronic wound management care.
The purpose of this resource is to:
- demonstrate options for incorporating virtual care into the chronic wound management healthcare journey
- showcase successful virtual care chronic wound management services
- describe considerations for delivering a virtual care chronic wound management consultation
- complement and link to existing virtual care and chronic wound management resources.
Our vision
Consumers living with chronic wounds will have increased access to, and choices for, their wound management through virtual care service options, and this will improve consumer experiences of care and wound management outcomes.
Service approaches
This section looks at ways that services can organise the delivery of chronic wound management using virtual care, including case studies of approaches used in five local health districts. The approaches covered include:
Services delivered
This section looks at what elements of chronic wound management services can be delivered using virtual care, including examples of practice in local health districts. The services include:
Tips for using virtual care
Clinicians share their advice about how to deliver chronic wound management consultations, including pre-consultation preparation, technology and therapeutic environment consideration, wound assessment and education approaches. Follow these tips
Resources
Resources are available which provide more detail about considerations and requirements for virtual care. There are also standards for chronic wound management that need to be incorporated into virtual care service options. View the resources
This guide is not a prescriptive or definitive list of all options available for delivering chronic wound management with virtual care.
New and innovative technologies, and ways to use them, will continue to emerge and be integrated into practice.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the NSW Health chronic wound management clinicians, virtual care managers and working group members who collaborated with the ACI Chronic Wound Management and Virtual Care teams to produce this guidance.
We also wish to thank the Local Health Districts who shared case studies and descriptions of their virtual care chronic wound management services:
- Mid North Coast Local Health District
- Murrumbidgee Local Health District
- Southern New South Wales Local Health District
- Sydney Local Health District
- Western New South Wales Local Health District