WOUND CARE SPECIALTY COMES TO BIGFORK VALLEY

Wound care might be limited to a bandage over a cut for some of us. But to others, it’s a much more serious business.

Diabetics, for instance, might face the loss of a limb due to wounds that will not heal. Others might face infection until wounds seal. The goal in wound care, explained Cathy Sellers, nurse practitioner at Bigfork Valley, is to have wound closure in the shortest amount of time possible while maximizing healing, and to do it in a cost efficient way.

Sellers is a Certified Wound, Ostomy and Continence Nurse, a specialty beyond a bachelor of science in nursing that required her to complete advanced instruction, clinical work and an internship.

It’s a field that requires constant updating. Today there could be as many as 10,000 products on the market for wound care, Sellers explained. And in addition to products, there are other ways to affect healing. Pressure or repositioning might be indicated. Nutrition may make a difference. Even surgery might be suggested. The CWOCN nurse practitioner is trained to take a holistic approach, taking the cause of the wound into account and noticing when other studies or interventions are needed.

Cost of care to the patient is also important. While a daily home care nurse visit to change a dressing might do the trick with simple and cheap gauze and saline, the cost of the visit itself might be much higher than the use of another more expensive product which can stay on a wound longer.

Some wounds are meant to remain open. Ostomies allow the digestive system to function properly in some patients, and the care of these openings through the skin are also part of Sellers’ specialty. The third part, continence, is an area which many assume to be part of aging. Not necessarily, according to Sellers. There are ways to combat incontinence through such things as life style changes, exercise or changes to medications.

Sellers came to northern Minnesota with extensive nursing experience. Raised on a working farm in central Iowa, she received her bachelor of nursing degree from Grand View College in Des Moines. She worked in intensive and coronary care units in hospitals in Iowa and Baltimore before returning to her home county to spend 14 years in public health.

She returned to school at the University of Iowa to graduate in 2002 with a masters of science degree in adult and gerontological nursing. Realizing that her close relatives were not interested in farming, she and her husband John made the difficult decision to sell her family homestead and move to a new job at Grand Itasca in Grand Rapids. After a year, however, that position fell to budget cuts.

It was devastating, she recalled. And even though she enjoyed a new position at Cuyuna Regional Medical Center, it was not in her area of specialty and far from her new home on Owen Lake near Bigfork.

Although she had a further opportunity to move to Duluth, she believed that she was in the right place for herself and the skills she could offer. When the opportunity came to develop a practice at Scenic Rivers Health Services in Bigfork, it was a perfect match.

There are others who are delighted that she is staying. The couple have two basset hounds, Buford and Betsy, and a grey goose Frieda who travels Owen Lake visiting friends.

Sellers can be seen directly by appointment through the Scenic Rivers Health Services medical clinic at Bigfork Valley (218) 743-3232, by referral or collaboratively with a physician. She also works with public health, teaches and does biweekly rounds at Bigfork Valley Communities and at the nursing home facilities in Kelliher and Northome.