WOCN and the wound healing society: Collaboration for wound care

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE WOCXI and The Wound Heeling Soc ety, Col aborat on for Wound Care I n addition to the premier WOC nursing education they expect, members attending the 1997 WOCN Conference in Nashville will have a unique opportunity to attend proceedings of the Wound Healing Society (WHS). An entire day of the conference will allow participants from both societies to attend both WOCN and WHS proceedings on wound care. This joint meeting is one aspect of a broader program designed to form a mutually valuable and productive collaboration between our associations. The collaboration between our organization begins with this historic combined meeting in Nashville. WOCN members will benefit from immediate access to cutting-edge, basic science-oriented research on w o u n d healing and regeneration presented by the world's leading investigators. In turn, WHS members will learn about and benefit from the latest clinical research and knowledge offered by the WOCN faculty and participants. This combination of basic and clinical research and education will help bridge the gap between the research into the basic sciences involved in wound healing and the clinical realities of wound care in 1997 and beyond. Exposure to scientific insights and knowledge of the p h y s i o l o g y and p a t h o p h y s i o l o g y of w o u n d formation and healing point toward new and more effective methods of managing w o u n d s in the clinical setting, and exposure to clinical issues and research similarly comprises a significant portion of the framework for such basic research, suggesting new hypoth-

eses and elucidating important gaps in our current knowledge. Exciting as it is, this combined meeting in Nashville is only one component of our new collaboration with the WHS. The WHS is exploring additional methods of providing WOCN members with the latest information and education concerning basic research into wound healLng and repair. In addition, our Journal has entered into an agreement with their publication, Wound Repair & Regeneration. This agreement includes sharing tables of contents and eventual reproduction in the Journal of selected abstracts from Wound Repair & Regeneration. These abstracts, which will appear in the "A" pages of our Journal, will be followed by brief commentaries on the potential clinical application of this research provided by Joie Whitney, PhD, RN, Feature Editor of the Notes on Methodology section. In addition, the Editors of our respective journals will further collaborate by serving on each other's Editorial Boards. If this program of collaboration proves as successful as we expect, the WOCN will seek to develop similar relationships with basic science researchers involved in continence physiology and those involved in gastrointestinal physiology of persons with ostomies. I believe that seeking out and building relationships will increase your access to the basic and clinical research information you need to remain the most informed, most effective resource for wound care in an increasingly competitive and outcomeoriented health care system.

Ruth Bryant, RN, MSN, CETN

J WOCN 1997;24:61 Copyright © 1997by the Wound, Ostorny and Continence Nurses Society. 0022-5223/97 $5.00 + 0

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