Healthcare professionals face many challenges every day in practice. In my practice the pressures faced during the Winter months is particularly challenging.
One Winter’s morning I received a phone call from a very distressed practice nurse. Due to increased service demands she was struggling to manage the patients requiring Compression Therapy Bandaging.
This was further complicated by the GP who advised the practice nurse to stop the patients Compression Bandaging, rather than offer a different solution!
You can imagine how horrified she and I were from the GP recommendations. So how did we overcome the challenges and pressures placed upon the clinician?
Simply introducing evidence based practice.
By reviewing the patients requiring compression, and implementing the results of the VenUS IV trial, patients who were suitable were taken out of Compression Bandaging and full therapeutic compression was applied using Leg Ulcer Hosiery Kits.
Using Leg Ulcer Hosiery Kits requires less time to apply and means they can also be applied not only by non-registered clinicians (effective skill mix) but also by the patient or patient’s carer/family.
The outcomes were fantastic, patients leg ulcers continued to improve and heal, the practice could meet the clinical needs of the patient even in a highly demanding period, and best of all a high proportion of the patients were now self-caring and reporting improvements in their quality of life.
The use of Leg Ulcer Hosiery Kits is a fantastic way of delivering effective therapeutic compression, resulting in improved healing outcomes, improved patient quality of life, supporting self-care and releasing clinician’s time to care.”
Joy Tickle, Tissue Viability Specialist, Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust.
For more information follow Joy on Twitter @JoyTickle.