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Stress

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Psychology of Wounds and Wound Care in Clinical Practice

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Abstract

The relationship between stress and delayed healing is now firmly established. This evidenced relationship may be associated with a range of factors linked to wound care. For example, the novelty of certain treatments- negative pressure for example- or the pain associated with wound management. Given the range of factors that are associated with wound related stress it is important that the health care professional understands the nature and model of stress, how best to assess it in practice and how any stress can be managed. These will be the foci of this particular chapter. Stress may be a consequence of several wound related factors:, most particularly pain and wound management pain in particular. Preventing stress, and stress related to pain, is important not just for the relationship with delayed wound healing, but importantly, to understand that this may be an ongoing deleterious cyclical relationship. Increased wound related pain leads to increased stress which leads to delayed healing, which can lead to more pain. It is this cycle that this chapter addresses and suggests methods to break this damaging predicament.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Health, University of Canberra, Canberra, Aust Capital Terr, Australia

    Dominic Upton

  2. Institute of Health and Society, University of Worcester, Worcester, UK

    Penney Upton

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  1. Dominic Upton
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  2. Penney Upton
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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Upton, D., Upton, P. (2015). Stress. In: Psychology of Wounds and Wound Care in Clinical Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09653-7_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09653-7_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-09652-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-09653-7

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