When faced with a patient with a chronic wound, the key question that clinicians need to ask themselves is ‘What is the optimal treatment plan for this patient’s wound?’ What is more, this question needs to be asked every time they examine a wound.

There are several useful wound assessment tools that enable the clinician to determine whether a wound is healing, such as the Pressure Ulcer Scale for Healing (PUSH) (National Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel, 1998) or the Pressure Sore Status Tool (PSST) (Bates-Jensen, 1990). The PUSH tool considers three parameters of the wound: area, exudate and tissue type. The PSST assesses 13 wound characteristics including depth, size, exudate type and oedema.