Evidence-based research is key to challenging and improving practice

How many of us are familiar with last year's publication of the National Wound Management Guidelines by the Republic of Ireland's Health Service Executive (HSE) (2018)? I would argue that we all should be, in the absence of a comprehensive document from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). It is an important piece of work that develops and revises the HSE's (2009)National Best Practice and Evidence Based Guidelines for Wound Management and is a much-needed update in an advancing technological field that is relevant to our daily practice.

In the present healthcare system, protocols and guidelines seem to dominate the practice landscape and it is often not clear, when one supersedes the next, which current ‘one’ we should be following. The HSE guidelines can be used to fill a knowledge gap in UK-based practice where no comparable document exists to provide a translatable structure for how we manage patients within the NHS.