Bridging gaps in wornd care: next month's conference of the New Zealand Wound Care Society has attracted an impressive range of national and international presenters.

Around 300 people, mostly nurses, are expected at next month's conference of the New Zealand Wound Care Society (NZWGS) to be held at Te Papa in Wellington. An impressive line-up of national and international speakers will address the conference, the theme of which is Building Bridges.

Conference convenor, chair of the NZWCS and a nurse practitioner (NP) specialising in wound care, Jenny Phillips, said the theme was very relevant. "Silos stiff exist between primary and secondary care. A person may be being treated in the primary health sector for a chronic wound and then be admitted to hospital for something unrelated. In hospital somebody will reassess the wound without thinking of contacting the primary health care nurse. We want to break down those walls a little. We also want to build bridges between research and practice and from education to practice," she explained. The conference begins with a function on the evening of April 6 but officially gets underway on Friday April 7, with a mihi whakatua.

The theme of the morning presentations is Research and Practice and the keynote address will be given by internationally renowned paediatric nursing specialist, nurse educator and author Philip Darbyshire. Now head of department and chair of nursing in the Department of Nursing and Midwifery Research and Practice Development at Adelaide's Women's and Children's Hospital, Darbyshire's presentation is entitled Getting practice-focused clinical research happening in practice.

"He is a very engaging speaker and can really make research come alive," Phillips said. Also presenting in this session is Hawke's Bay NP specialising in wound care, Pip Rutherford, who will present the research results from an interdisciplinary diabetes ulcer clinic in Hawke's Bay. (See also p12-13 of this issue.) The theme for the afternoon session of the first day is education and practice, and the keynote presenter is wound and ostomy wound management specialist and nurse educator Keryln Carville from Perth. She is the associate professor of domiciliary nursing, a joint position between Western Australia's largest home care nursing agency, the Silver Chain Nursing Association and Curtin University of Technology. She is chair of the Australian Wound Management Association's subcommittee for development and review of Australian standards of wound care management. She will speak on bridging the practice-theory gap.

A specialist researcher for a major health care products company in the United Kingdom, Alastair McLeod, will give the keynote address on the second day of the conference. The business director (pressure area care) for Huntleigh Healthcare, McLeod will speak on the scientific principles of the design of support surfaces. With a background in engineering, McLeod manages research programmes for new products and new clinical applications, with particular emphasis on pressure ulcer and leg ulcer therapy and prevention devices, deep vein thrombosis prevention devices, and specialist and general purpose hospital beds.

The theme of the morning session is Any Bridges in Practice and will also feature Hamilton-based NP specialising in wound care Julie Betts, who will give a presentation entitled The Use of Honey in Wound Care: A Re-emerging Therapy. Betts is the co-investigator of honey as an adjunctive leg ulcer treatment trial and lead investigator of the evaluation of an NP leg ulcer clinic. The conference Master of Ceremonies, Adrian Te Patu, who is the Maori health adviser, Rural Health Services for the Canterbury District Health Board, will also give a presentation in this session. It has the intriguing title Haka and Hangi--Haggis and Hogmanay: Insight to Tribal Psyches--Building Bridges. Speaking before the conference, he said one in three New Zealanders were of Scottish or Irish descent and clans and iwi were cultural concepts of kinship. "Nursing is one of the strongest cultures in this country and a very highly regarded one and my presentation looks at nursing as an oppressed culture." From a mental health and social work background, Te Patu moved into community development and public health. "There is a strong need, want and desire within the sector to do a good job by Maori but there are stiff many things we do not know about each other. If you can do what you do well with "brown folk' you can do it well with anyone. This is the benchmark for building bridges."

The conference's final keynote speaker is cancer nursing and palliative care specialist Wayne Naylor, who is a clinical nurse specialist at Capital and Coast District Health Board's Wellington Cancer Centre. Naylor, who was the wound management research nurse at London's Royal Marsden Hospital for three years, will give a presentation entitled Changing the Goal Posts: When Healing is Not The Aim. The conference will end with a panel discussion with the keynote speakers.

Phillips said there was an impressive line-up of speakers. The organising committee decided against concurrent streams so all delegates could hear all speakers, she said. The last NZWCS conference was held in 2003. Phillips hopes they will now be held every alternate year. The Australian Wound Management Association holds a conference every alternate year and the New Zealand conference would be held in the intervening years.

The NZWCS has between 250 and 300 members, predominantly nurses. It has local groups around the country, some with a local co-ordinator. For further information about the conference or to register, email: [e-mail].