Wound care clinical manager speaks on the field’s future

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Wound care is becoming increasingly important.

As methods like hyperbaric oxygen therapy to treat chronic wounds that aren’t healing on their own grow in use, awareness of the field is on the rise, too. Chronic wounds are also becoming more common due rising diabetes rates or simply because people are living longer.

As a result, Fortune Business Insights projects the global market will grow from $22 billion in 2025 to $36 billion by 2032.

To learn more about this growing field, we spoke with Leah Arentz, a registered nurse who works as clinical manager of advanced wound care center Healogics at the Baylor Scott and White Institute for Rehabilitation Lakeway Wound Care and Hyperbaric Center in Lakeway, Texas.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in healthcare?

It’s very different from acute care or even primary care. In primary care, you see your patients when they’re sick, and once or twice a year for checkups. In acute care, they’re in and out at most in a couple weeks. We see our patients weekly until their wounds heal. And sometimes that’s six weeks, sometimes that’s 12 weeks, sometimes that’s two years. Sometimes it’s forever because some of our wounds don’t heal.

What’s the best change you’ve made or seen at a place you’ve worked?

I think the move toward more open communication and collaboration with other specialties has been a very positive thing for patient outcomes.

It’s taken a long time for wound care, firstly, to be recognized as a specialty, but then also for the education piece to get out to where other entities are understanding when it’s time to go ahead and send their patients to wound care instead of holding on to them and beating their head against the wall trying to heal this thing that they really don’t have the practice and formal education to attack.

What healthcare trend are you least optimistic about?

I’m quite disturbed and discouraged, especially given everything that happened in 2020 and 2021 with the pandemic…that the current administration has made it abundantly clear that nursing as a profession should be questioned or should not be presented as a professional [degree].

What healthcare trend are you most optimistic about?

My optimism lies in the fact that I know that we will continue to have the profession of nursing, with or without this administration’s approval, and that people like me and my colleagues will continue to further the profession of nursing.

In my daily practice, at least two to three days a week, I have nursing students shadowing me in the clinic. Other than healing wounds, obviously, the most rewarding part of my job is that, in my position, I have the time and space to mentor and teach future nurses.