Improving Wound Care Around the World

Barbara Bates Jensen, PhD., RN has a goal--a world without wounds. To help her achieve that goal, for the past few years she has hosted international students. This year, she is hosting a wound care nurse from Turkey--Deniz Harputlu, PhD.

For 8 years, Deniz worked as a hospital nurse in a University Hospital in Izmir, Turkey. She got a master’s and then started working on her doctoral degree, focused on community health. She loved her job and wasn’t really looking for new opportunities when she was approached by her professor (who was also a surgeon) who asked if she wanted to learn more about ostomy and wound care nursing. It was a new construct in Turkey and she jumped at the chance.

In 2010, her hospital opened a wound/ostomy unit and she started taking care of these patients. To improve her care delivery, her professor suggested she attend a certification program, so Deniz was sent to the Cleveland Clinic School of Wound Ostomy Continence Nursing, becoming the second person in Turkey to get the same certification. On return, she changed the direction of her PhD dissertation and studied complications of ostomy patients at home.

When she graduated in 2014, she was looking for ways to increase her knowledge of woundcare. She had heard of Dr. Barbara Bates-Jensen (Dr. BBJ) because they use a Turkish version of her wound assessment tool. She wanted to come back to the United States to do a postdoc, so asked BBJ if she could come study with her.

Since June 2015, Deniz has been working with BBJ on a project to test a new product for protecting skin from developing pressure ulcers and, if it is a tool that nurses can use. They finished data collection at the end of November and are currently analyzing the results so they can publish the data.

Deniz has found there are many differences between research in the United States and in Turkey. “Research is a much more stringent process here in the United States and privacy is much more complicated. I think I have improved my skin analysis and have different ways to analyze skin”.

In addition to the research, she has observed BBJ teach and she likes the casualness of relationships between students and faculty.

Outside the formal school setting, she has taken up another BBJ habit and has become a runner “well maybe more of a walker, but it is a good habit.”

She likes LA and finds the people to be very friendly and relaxed.She has welcomed the opportunity toget more fluent in English so she can publish in international journals. A poster she helped prepare for The Clinical Symposium on Advances in Skin & Wound Care was selected as “best poster.”

Deniz will return to Turkey in June and hopes that she will get the opportunity to do more research with BBJ in the future. “I hope that BBJ will come to my University and help us to improve our wound care and research capabilities in this very important area.”

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