Science meets nursing

There are a lot of things to consider when developing a new wound dressing. The best people to ask are the nurses who are going to use it. What did they want in a Mānuka honey wound dressing, and why?

Transcript

Peter Molan (University of Waikato)

The absolutely essential part of the development of the dressings was the collaboration with somebody working with patients - a woundcare specialist with a very good knowledge of wound healing and an investigative mind and a willingness to try this.

Julie Betts (Health Waikato)

During the pilot trial we learnt a lot about the things we might want to see in a dressing, that you might have commercially available.

Lots of nurses saw the honey being used and really wanted to use it more extensively on other patients. We’d said, if we’re going to make a dressing these are the characteristics we need: We need something that’ll absorb the ooze from the wound over a longer period of time - so that the honey gets released into the wound as that happens. Something that doesn’t stick and if we could something that had what we call, haemostatic properties, so that it helps minimise bleeding of the wound’.

The alginates as a dressing do that extremely well.