Kati Kaushal, DNP, FNP-C, CWS — The Wound Care Clinician Who Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

The Rock Star Bio

Kati Kaushal is the rarest bird in wound care: a Certified Wound Specialist with a Doctor of Nursing Practice who can hold a chart in one hand and a P&L in the other and give you the honest answer for both. She is Chief Executive Officer of Kindling Clinical Consulting, a board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner, and the former Senior Director of Clinical Operations at R3 Wound Care & Hyperbarics. If you want to know what excellent wound care actually looks like from a clinician's chair — she'll show you. Politely. But she will not sugarcoat it.

Here is the thing I want you to internalize about Kati: she is one of the brightest clinical minds in this space. Full stop. If you are trying to move fast and not set off the landmines that live in wound care — MAC-quirks, LCD updates, product-versus-outcome trade-offs, documentation traps that kill claims — Kati is the person you call. She'll see the mine three steps before you do.

The Origin Story

Kati is a DNP — Doctor of Nursing Practice — Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP-C), and a Certified Wound Specialist (CWS) through the ABWM. That's not a résumé line, that's a three-degree burn of clinical rigor. Her clinical background spans hospital-based, outpatient, and specialty-care wound programs, and she served as Senior Director of Clinical Operations & Efficiency for a PE-backed multi-site wound care organization — overseeing clinical strategy, regulatory compliance, provider development, and patient safety initiatives.

Then she built the firm she wished existed.

What She's Building Right Now

Kindling Clinical Consulting, which she co-leads with Nikki Johnston, exists to help wound care organizations "build stronger programs, develop confident teams, and achieve lasting success." Kati leads the clinical vision and strategic direction. She combines:

• Deep clinical expertise
• Operational strategy
• Quality improvement
• Provider development

Kindling advises on advanced care program development, mentorship, provider education, and the operational muscle that lets clinical excellence actually scale. Since the firm's launch, Kati and Nikki have publicly announced a partnership with Medipyxis for mobile wound care and rolled out an in-person wound care training program.

Why You Need To Know Her

Because she posts things like this — publicly, on LinkedIn, under her real name:

"Most wounds don't need 10 products… they need 10 minutes of critical thinking. The fundamentals still work: offload, debride, moisture balance, and optimize the host."

That is a heretical statement in an industry that has spent a decade selling products. Kati is out here selling thinking. That takes courage. It also happens to be correct.

And this is where the landmine detection comes in. In wound care, the difference between "we ran a great clinical case" and "we ran a great clinical case and got paid" is a corridor of tiny operational decisions — assessment templates, MAC-aware documentation, product selection under a shifting LCD, staff training that survives turnover. Kati has walked that corridor for years. She knows exactly which floorboards are wired. If you are building a program and you don't want to learn the corridor by stepping on the mines yourself, you call her first.

Something She Didn't Tell Me

She is genuinely, unapologetically excited about the wound care conference circuit — recently posting about SAWC and the Driving Innovation in Wound Care Summit, calling herself "truly honored to be part of the conversations." She was also the featured guest on the very first episode of the Medipyxis Podcast, alongside Nikki Johnston — a conversation titled "Improving Wound Care Operations with Clarity and Structure." She showed up ready. She always shows up ready.

There is one more detail that says everything about her personality. When you look Kati up on physician directories, she is still listed as accepting patients in a nurse practitioner role — even while running a national consulting firm. The CEO is still at the bedside. That is the entire personality profile in one data point.

The Signature Move

Reducing complexity without reducing rigor. Kati's clinical philosophy is that the fundamentals of wound care are not broken — the discipline around applying them is. She'll walk into a practice, take one look at the assessment templates, and identify three things that need to stop, two that need to start, and one that needs to be standardized yesterday. Then she'll teach your whole team to do it without needing her again.

That's the highest form of consulting: the kind that makes itself unnecessary.

How To Work With Her

• Website: kindlingconsulting.com
• LinkedIn: Kati Kaushal, DNP, FNP-C, CWS
• Best way in: Message her on LinkedIn with the actual clinical or operational question. She responds better to substance than to flattery.

The Legend Quote

"Most wounds don't need 10 products… they need 10 minutes of critical thinking." — Kati Kaushal, DNP, FNP-C, CWS, LinkedIn

Translation: put down the CTP catalog. Pick up the assessment form.

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Kati Kaushal is an inductee of the Wound Care Hall of Fame, a Medipyxis series honoring the clinicians, operators, and builders who move this industry forward. She co-founded Kindling Consulting with fellow inductee Nikki Johnston. See also: Hailey Caprara, Jennifer Bierhup.