A personal take on why the biggest mistake hospitals make isn't choosing ConvaTec or a competitor, but failing to invest in the people who use them.

You’re Chasing the Wrong Problem

Here’s my opinion, and I’ll state it plainly: Most hospitals don’t have a product problem, they have a training problem.

I’ve been handling procurement for ostomy and wound care products in a mid-sized regional hospital network for about 7 years now. I’m the guy who orders the ConvaTec moldable skin barriers, the GentleCath catheters, and the Esteem+ pouches. I've personally made enough mistakes—and documented them—to fill a small binder. I’d estimate those errors cost us roughly $12,000 in wasted budget over my first two years alone. Now, I maintain our team's internal checklist. And the number one pattern I see? People blaming the product when the real issue is the user.

It’s a convenient scapegoat. The moldable skin barrier failed to seal, so the product must be faulty. The infusion pump keeps beeping, so it’s a defective unit. The cryosurgery device’s tip wasn’t cold enough for the second case—must be a manufacturing flaw. But after spending hours in the OR, in the wound clinic, and on the phone with nurses, I started to see the pattern differently. It wasn’t the products. It was how we were taught to use them.

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Argument 1: The Product Is Actually Incredibly Forgiving

Let’s start with the product I’m most familiar with: the ConvaTec moldable skin barrier. People think it’s a “one-size-fits-most” solution. Actually, the technology is designed to be forgiving of common application errors. That’s the whole point of the “moldable” part. But here’s what I’ve seen: nurses are rushed during a 10-minute dressing change. They try to apply it without properly cleaning the peristomal skin, or they don't warm the barrier in their hands first to make it pliable.

Fact: These barriers are engineered with a hydrocolloid that needs body heat to fully conform. If you slap it on cold from the pack, it’s not going to work as intended. That’s not a product flaw—it’s a technique flaw.

I once ordered 500 boxes of ConvaTec Stomahesive paste for a new wing of the hospital. We had a 4-week training gap before the new nurses started. The return rate on those tubes was over 15%. The nurses complained the paste “didn’t stick.” We did a 30-minute training review. Problem disappeared. It wasn’t the paste.

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Argument 2: The “I Just Need the Best Device” Fallacy

I see the same pattern with infusion pumps and, surprisingly, mobility scooters (yes, we have a small fleet for patient transport). With infusion pumps, the question is always: “How do you prime the line?” Everyone wants a pump that’s “idiot-proof.” The search for the perfect, easy-to-prime pump is endless.

People think the device causes the error. Actually, the absence of standardized priming protocol causes the error. I’ve watched 10 different nurses prime the exact same pump model 10 different ways. Five of them introduced air into the line. The other five had a perfect patient experience. The pump wasn’t the variable. The habit was.

Never expected to see this, but the same logic applies to cryosurgery devices. On paper, one brand might have a slightly faster freeze-thaw cycle. But if your team isn’t trained on the specific sound the device makes when it’s fully charged, or the exact distance to hold the tip from the tissue, the spec difference means nothing. The surprise wasn’t the device performance—it was how often a $50 training video could have prevented a $2,000 complication.

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Argument 3: The Real Cost Isn't the Product—It's the Retraining Cycle

So why does this happen? It's not malice. It's a system failure. Here’s my observation: hospitals allocate enormous budgets to product evaluation (testing 3 different ConvaTec pouches, comparing them to Hollister or Coloplast), and almost nothing to the ongoing education of the person holding the product.

We will spend $3,000 on a trial batch of a new barrier wafer, but we won’t spend $300 on a certification course for the two new nurses who just joined the wound care team. The result? The product is tested under ideal conditions by the expert. It’s then deployed to the floor where it’s used by the novice. And it “fails.”

That failure isn’t just a cost in wasted product (which, honestly, is small). It’s a cost in patient frustration, extended hospital stays, and—critically—nurse burnout. When your tool keeps “failing,” you stop trusting the tool. You blame the ConvaTec industry. You demand a different brand. And the cycle repeats.

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Counterargument: “But What About Bad Products?”

Sure, they exist. There are genuinely bad batches, outdated designs, and products that just don’t work for specific anatomies. I’ll be the first to admit that no product is perfect for every patient.

But here’s the thing: the industry standard for patient safety is high. A product that is consistently failing in the field gets recalled fast. When we track our error logs over the last 18 months, we’ve caught 47 potential errors using our pre-check list. Guess how many were traced back to a confirmed manufacturing defect in a ConvaTec product? Zero. The rest were user technique or misapplication.

That’s not a defense of a single brand. It’s a defense of the principle of training before product replacement. If you don’t fix the user input, you’re just swapping out one set of tools for another, hoping the problem disappears. It won’t.

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Final Word: Stop Looking for the Magic Bullet

I understand why managers want to blame the moldable skin barrier or the infusion pump. It’s a concrete target. It’s easier to get approval for a new product purchase than it is to get approval for a mandatory 8-hour training block for the nursing staff. But I’ve lived the alternative approach now.

Go watch your team prime a pump. Watch them apply a barrier. See what they actually do with a patient who is anxious or in pain. I promise you, the biggest gap you’ll find isn’t the brand in their hand—it’s the knowledge in their head.

Fix the training. The product will follow.