WCET®’s mission, in part, includes specialty care for all patients with ostomies worldwide. To that end, there is a need for ostomy practice guidelines that are internationally focused rather than country specific and can be applicable to all countries whether resource challenged or resource abundant. The WCET® ostomy guidelines will provide practice recommendations that can be used regardless of the health care system and can be customized to the individual patient and country situation.

The WCET® guideline will also include cultural, religious and/or ethnic information for ostomy patients that is international in perspective. In today’s global world, people travel internationally. During travel medical emergencies arise and treatment may be in a “different” country for the traveler. For nurses this means we must have skills in cultural competence to enable us to provide the highest quality care. This care must take into account the patient’s ethnicity, religion, customs as well as geographic area of residence, language, psycho/economic status and psycho/social needs {Laskowski-Jones, 2012 #1}.

For a person with an ostomy quality means the care provider must be aware of the cultural implications of ostomy care. Therefore the WCET® guidelines will help the provider plan care using appropriate cultural considerations. The guidelines will also consider types of ostomy products that are used around the world as well as global resources that are available.

WCET® intends the information in this document to be useable and applicable to the care delivery in urban, rural and mobile populations as that all persons worldwide can receive adequate care using the available resources in their local community. To this end, the WCET® International Ostomy Guidelines are portable to a variety of settings and in a variety of languages so that the principles of care as set forth in these recommendations can be customized for the individual patient based on their local customs, culture and health care system.

Available for Purchase 

Summary of the WCET® IOG 2014 Recommendations
(with French, Portuguese, Spanish and Chinese translations)

Summary of the WCET® IOG 2020 Recommendations
(with Chinese, French, Malaysian, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish translations)

The first joint APWCA/ASWC videocast available on YouTube featuring the WCETⓇ’s hard work on their 2020 IOG:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R-Uf7aSKjc

The WCET® IOG 2020 received the 
JWC WHWUS 2022 Silver Award Innovation in Skin Integrity!