Nursing Agency for Wound Care, Ostomy, and continence Nurses,RN (WOC)

About 5 million Americans suffer from non healing wounds and about 500,00 also have ostomies. On top of that their are also an estimated 11 million Americans have fecal and urinary incontinence.  Who takes care of these Americans?  The WOC nurses, or nurses who has special training in wound care, ostomies, urinary and fecal incontinence takes care of them. Some nursing agencies are specializing or supplementing their nursing agencies with these special train nurses to take care of these niche market.

The ostomies, incontinence, and wound care specialty nurses emerged in the late 1960's and it evolve over the years when patients needed the support of these nurses for their post operative recoveries. 

These  WOC, ostomy, wound care, incontinence nurses that works for a nursing agency, agencies practices in all environment, scopes, and settings. These nursing agency nurses work in hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, home health, insurance industries.  These nursing agency nurses are part of team of physicians, other nurses, medical records personnel, physical, occupational, and respiratory therapists.

The WOC, or nursing agency ostomy rn nurse primary job is to consult before and after the surgery of an ostomy patients.  The nursing agency rn and the ostomy patients determine the best route to divert the opening of bowel or bladder with the supervision of a doctor. The best route is determine by the patient lifestyle, anatomy, and personal preference. 

Post surgery, the nursing agency ostomy rn follow up with the patients and family to consult about care of the ostomy.  It usually involves diet, ostomy appliance, and other issues.

The  WOC, or nursing agency wound and continence care rn consults with patients with chronic and acute wounds usually cause by pressure ulcers, diabetes, and circulatory problems. These nursing agency wound and continence rn develop treatment and prevention guidelines with the approval of doctors.  Pressure ulcers usually develop when constant pressure is applied to an area continuously.  These usually happens when a patient lies in the same position for a long time.

In some states, hospitals are required to report to the state cases of pressure ulcers because they are preventable.  Because of the mandatory reporting, demands for nursing agency ostomy, wound care, continence nurses are increasing.

Special training and education for ostomy, wound care, continence nurses before they can work for nursing agencies, nursing agency, hospitals, clinics,  and rehab centers.  The training and education for WOC nurses are four year degree nursing plus certification to each of the three areas.  The job outlook for these nursing professionals are great, and a lot of nursing agencies are increasingly hiring more of the WOC nurses because of the great demand.