Linda Benskin

Linda Benskin, PhD, RN, SRN (Ghana), CWCN, CWS, DAPWCA, is a nurse researcher, educator, and wound care specialist with a career spanning more than four decades in clinical practice, international fieldwork, and academic research. Benskin earned her PhD in nursing education from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, focusing on sustainable wound management strategies for village health workers in remote and conflict-affected areas of tropical developing countries.

Throughout her nursing career, Benskin has worked in pediatrics at a Level 1 Trauma Center, home health, a free-standing clinic in a remote area of Africa, and as a technical writer and poster designer for the healthcare industry. She has also served as a nurse researcher and educator. Benskin became a wound care expert during five years of patient care and training village health workers in a conflict-prone area of West Africa, and has managed wound patients both in person in the United States and remotely worldwide.

Benskin developed a comprehensive handbook for a self-supporting village health worker training program, which contributed to her understanding of wound healing principles and physiology. Her dissertation research established the foundation for her ongoing independent research into sustainable wound care methods for resource-limited settings.

Benskin’s usual practice study and a Wound Healing Foundation Clinical Research Grant supported her randomized controlled trial, which demonstrated that her Available Technology Dressing method is safe, effective, and acceptable for treating sickle cell leg ulcers in Jamaica. This technique has also been applied successfully to other wound types, including large infected third-degree burns in rural Angola. Her doctoral research was nominated for a national dissertation award. Benskin has authored more than 83 publications, with over 350 citations, covering wound care, tropical medicine, pain, and inflammation.

Benskin has taught in academic and informal settings, at educational conferences, in small groups, webinars, hospitals, and remote outdoor locations, reaching audiences from experienced surgeons to villagers with limited literacy across six continents. Her involvement with the Association for the Advancement of Wound Care includes membership in the Speakers Bureau, poster presentations at SAWC meetings, and literature reviews. Benskin has peer-reviewed articles for more than a dozen academic journals, including Advances in Wound Care and Advances in Skin and Wound Care.

Her research has been presented at the Symposium on Advanced Wound Care, highlighting the importance of interventions with ecological validity—those proven effective in the cultural, climatic, and resource-limited conditions of rural tropical villages. Benskin’s review of the role of vitamin D deficiency in the COVID-19 pandemic has been cited by over 130 author groups, and her invited chapter on this topic was featured on several DarkHorse podcasts. She emphasizes working with the body to promote healing, delivering information-dense, referenced articles and presentations on wound healing principles, infection management, pain, inflammation, and vitamin D, in diverse settings including conferences, classrooms, webinars, podcasts, and field locations. Benskin’s combination of clinical experience, academic research, and commitment to global health equity positions her as a leading voice in wound care education and tropical medicine.