Lindsay Leg Club recognised in the UK House of Lords

Lindsay Leg Club recognised in the UK House of Lords

22 November 2017

 

Hansard Online

 

House of Lords Debate: NHS Wound Care

 

Baroness Masham, Foundation Patron

 

I also declare an interest as a patron of the Lindsay Leg Club Foundation, which is a charity concerned with the leg ulcers that affect about 700,000 people in the UK. The cost of leg ulcer treatment and management ​is around £1.94 billion. The ulcers are painful and debilitating, they consume a vast amount of district nurses’ time and they often lead to social isolation. The Lindsay Leg Club Foundation helps promote a social model of care which improves healing rates, decreases social isolation and enables healed legs to be maintained with a “well leg” regime of care.

 

 

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)

 

A fantastic initiative has developed. It originated in Barnstaple in Devon and has already been alluded to by my noble friend Lady Masham. ​It is the Lindsay Leg Club Foundation. These clubs are usually led by qualified district nurses and have between 50 and 200 active members who have had or have leg ulcers. The clubs are gateways for input from tissue viability specialists, podiatrists and nutritionists. Initial results show quicker healing and improvement of ulcers and reduced prescribing costs through adherence to approved treatments, some of which are expensive but cost-effective. The clubs empower patients as stakeholders to work in partnership with professional staff, volunteers and their peers. Leg clubs are built around the notion of promoting peoples’ independence and well-being. This new social model of care is proving effective not only in the treatment of the physical wound but in promoting people’s independence and mental well-being by reducing loneliness and isolation.

 

Any wound strategy needs to consider how we prepare health professionals to work with groups, encouraging self-care as far as feasible, and how to integrate evidence-based practice through the dissemination of new evidence. There is little doubt that investment in the nursing workforce, particularly in CPD, is as important as selecting the best treatment product.

An RCT in Queensland, Australia, concluded that nursing time and related costs decreased by 36% using the leg club model, leading to the cost per healed leg ulcer being reduced by 58%. When I was practising, I undertook single home visits. These will always be necessary for some patients, but I delight in acknowledging that today’s leg clinic model is one that I would now wish to adopt. I believe it would have benefited my patients more cost effectively than the intervention I undertook, particularly in terms of productivity in nursing time.

 

 

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health Lord O’Shaughnessy (Con)

I end by saying how impressed I have been by the briefing received from the Lindsay Leg Club, which the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, talked about and of which I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, is patron. If noble Lords have not read it, I encourage them to do so. It provides just the kind of activity and intervention that we want to see. It is not just about good care; it is also about individual psychosocial needs and health beliefs. It is about getting good patients, as well as having good care and good products. I thoroughly commend the work that it is doing, and I would like to see more of it.