How to prepare the wound bed.

This clinically focused article addresses the nuts and bolts of wound bed preparation. Preparing the wound bed is a frequently ignored step in the process of treating chronic wounds. In these days of high-tech instrumentation use for chronic wound care (i.e., adjunctive therapies, growth factors, and skin substitutes), clinicians should not forget the basics that are essential for optimizing wound healing. This article introduces the PREPARE Model (see Figure 1) as an aid for guiding care providers in wound bed preparation.