Experiences of negative pressure wound therapy from the patient's perspective

Enabling patients to be active in their care is constantly being promoted in the current healthcare arena, and there is strong evidence to suggest that outcomes can be improved through promoting this in the clinical setting. For clinicians to incorporate this in practice, we must firstly examine the patient's perspective of treatments offered to them. This article explores the few studies that have investigated the patient's experiences of negative pressure wound therapy, to provide clinicians with an awareness of the issues that are raised by patients when receiving NPWT. The findings demonstrate that NPWT impacts on patients physically and psychologically, in both positive and negative ways. Clinicians have the ability to deal with some of these issues but others will rely on technological advances.