Wounds Canada has published an updated edition of its free digital book Best Practice Recommendations for Skin Health and Wound Management 2025.

Downloaded more than a million times since their inception 25 years ago, the various editions of Wounds Canada’s best practice recommendations have been the evidence-based cornerstone of skin health, wound prevention and management in Canada, providing health-care providers and health decision-makers with the latest evidence in a reader-friendly format that helps move wound-related knowledge into practice.

Chapters include best practice recommendations for skin, prevention and management with an emphasis on nutrition and wound healing, moisture-associated skin damage, skin tears, pressure injuries, burns, surgical wound complications, arterial ulcers, diabetic foot complications, venous leg ulcers and lymphedema.

The current edition contains new information, has an increased focus on prevention and provides live links to other essential resources and practice tools.

Other features of the book include:

• An overview of the structures and physiology of skin and the process of skin healing

• Chapter 4 prevention and management, new Appendix focused on nutrition and wound healing

• Recommendations based on the latest evidence and international best practice guidelines for common wound types

• Detailed explanations on how to implement the recommendations into practice

• Information on how to identify specific wound types, who’s most at risk and factors that affect healing

• Newly developed chapter focused on lymphedema and lower limb skin health and corresponding wounds

• The use of the Wound Prevention and Management Cycle to organize the information and provide clinical pathways for clinicians and health decision-makers by providing step-by-step processes they can incorporate into practice for improved outcomes

• Chapters that can be downloaded individually for ease-of-use as PDFs.

Throughout, the content emphasizes holistic patient assessment, promotion of skin health and specific screening to identify persons at risk and high-risk individuals and prevent the development of wounds or wound complications through early, effective interventions based on the assessments.

Helpful self-management strategies for patients and care partners are discussed and recommended as a magnifier for health-care provider wound prevention and management interventions, leading to better, sustained care and, ultimately, outcomes. The book supports the Quintuple Aim framework, in which patient experience is enhanced, costs are reduced, population health is improved, the care-team experience is improved and equity in health care is available to all.

Wounds Canada congratulates, and wholeheartedly thanks, all the experts who participated, and provided their crucial professional insight, in order to make another edition of this book possible. We commend you for helping Wounds Canada on its mission, creating a culture of wound care excellence for all Canadians.

With input from medical experts nationwide, Wounds Canada is now working on a Patient’s Bill of Rights, so all Canadians can more effectively receive the health care that they deserve.

To download the free BPRs: https://www.woundscanada.ca/bpr