Timing issues for wound care research.

While certain issues related to time, such as time to healing, are frequently discussed in the wound care literature, other important time-related issues for conducting and interpreting wound research are only rarely addressed. Time presents serious philosophical and methodological challenges that can have a significant impact on the validity, reliability or rigor of a study and are, therefore, worthy of consideration. This article discusses four commonly encountered time-related problems for wound research (time-congruent research questions and designs, time specific measurement tools and protocols, retrospective versus prospective studies, and time sampling/sequential triangulation), presents examples to illustrate these problems, and posits some solutions. Five questions are offered as a guide for determining whether wound research tools and protocols adequately address time-related research issues.