|
|
|
|
|
|
Leg club |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Key contact:
The 'Leg Club' project started as a partnership between QUT's School of Nursing and Midwifery and Spiritus Care Services community health organisation (formerly the St Luke's Nursing Service) to treat a common condition of older people – chronic leg ulcers. The concept was adapted from the highly successful network of Leg Clubs founded in the UK by community nursing practitioner Ellie Lindsay. The central idea is to treat sufferers as a group in a community location, rather than individually and at home as has traditionally been standard practice. In this way a community or club, which members themselves are responsible for maintaining, is established. Observation suggested that the social and psychological benefits of the clubs, such as peer support and de-stigmatisation of the condition, lead to better outcomes than the traditional approach while also reducing the need for home visits by community nurses. A Queensland Nursing Council and QUT ATN Grant funded research to compare outcomes from the leg clubs and traditional approaches to treating leg ulcers. "We were able to show that the cost to the health care system per healed leg ulcer treated through home nursing care was three times that for leg club at three months and twice that for leg club at six months," said Professor Helen Edwards of QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation. "Not only were the rates of healing much improved, but so was quality of life measured across a range of aspects such as pain, morale and independence in daily activities." Members of the Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation such as medical engineer Professor Mark Pearcy and Professor Zee Upton, a specialist in tissue repair and regeneration from the Faculty of Science, are working with Professor Helen Edwards and staff from the School of Nursing and Midwifery in this research. The scope of this ongoing collaboration has now expanded to include areas such as the biochemistry of ulcer wounds and healing, and the development of a compact device to measure the optimal pressure to be applied during bandaging, funded by a QUT strategic collaborative and NH&MRC research grants.
|
||||||||||||||||||||
