Hospitals

Nurse converts corn pads into quick fix for minor diabetic ulcers

Corn pads are probably not the first remedy that pops up when people think of […]

Corn pads are probably not the first remedy that pops up when people think of cost-effective ways to prevent diabetic ulcers from worsening to the point where patients need to be admitted to a hospital or worse, have a foot amputated. But a nurse innovating on the job highlighted her discovery in a guest blog post on MakerNurse’s website.

MakerNurse is an initiative led by MIT’s Little Devices lab promoting DIY health technology and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Family nurse practitioner student Meredith Bassler has worked in an outpatient podiatry clinic in San Francisco as part of a master’s degree in nursing at San Francisco State University. She recalled that many of the patients she saw had diabetic neuropathy and lacked the sensitivity to sense when a small cut on the soles of their feet was not easily remedied by a Band-aid.

So here was the challenge: How do you provide a more substantial solution than a Band-aid to patients when there’s limited access to the kind of insulating foam that patients need? And how can you make it easier for some of the 29 million people with Type 2 diabetes to do a better job of managing their condition when they develop small cuts in their feet?

As Bassler put it: “Around 50 percent of our patients sought care due to wounds that had grown too large for home management. For them to take care of themselves, we needed padding readily available for all diabetics and easy to use; something patients could pick up at the drugstore. It also needed to be user friendly; I couldn’t have my diabetic patients carving away at foam with a scalpel!”

She spotted some corn pads in a pharmacy and with a pair of scissors cut variations on shapes that could conform to different wound shapes. She reviewed her approach with podiatric surgeons and other nurse practitioners who she worked with at the clinic. They supported using the solution for diabetic patients with small foot wounds. She reported in her blog post:

“I started showing my diabetic patients how to recreate what I had done with the circular corn pads, and having them repeat the process to check if there were any further teaching needs. My patients loved the idea of being able to buy something at their closest pharmacy and turn it into something they could use at home. I encouraged my patients to use the pads early and often to prevent their small cuts from getting worse. I checked in on them and they reported back: The material was easy to obtain, easy to manipulate and it seemed to prevent tiny scrapes and scratches from becoming worse. I was thrilled; I had found something to make my patients’ lives easier and healthier! And as I saw my patients every 1-4 weeks for check-ups, I could see that the use of pads was being done correctly and safely.”

Obviously different providers have their own protocols, but Bassler’s approach offers a window on the kinds of approaches that can provide more effective treatment earlier in a way that avoids the need for costlier interventions later on. As she points out in her blog, the cost of an amputation is $52,000 without adding the impact of reduced mobility on the quality of life.

MakerNurse embarked on a collaboration with Robert Wood Johnson Foundation last year to gather these kind of stories from the front lines of clinics and hospitals. The goal is to standardize the protocols for developing ways to improve healthcare delivery.

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