{"id":1321,"date":"2019-05-30T15:05:10","date_gmt":"2019-05-30T14:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/?p=1321"},"modified":"2019-05-30T15:05:18","modified_gmt":"2019-05-30T14:05:18","slug":"lindsay-leg-clubs-how-social-infrastructure-can-improve-wound-healing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/business-school\/lindsay-leg-clubs-how-social-infrastructure-can-improve-wound-healing\/","title":{"rendered":"Lindsay Leg Clubs: how social infrastructure can improve wound healing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In our latest post, Dr Anna Galazka shares some of the findings of her PhD research where She focused on the emancipatory potential of clinician-patient partnerships for dealing with the social stigma of wounds and the \u2018dirty work\u2019 stigma of wound healing. <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to developments in healthcare\nwe now live longer. However, medicine has not yet found ways of curing many of\nthe chronic diseases that sometimes show themselves as hard-to-heal wounds on already\nfragile, ageing skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wounds are often a hidden debilitating\ncondition that can reduce the quality of social life for elderly people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Death of a spouse, declining mobility\nor embarrassment caused by the wound smell mean that elderly people suffering\nfrom chronic ulcers are likely to experience social isolation. Loneliness and\nits negative effects on physical and mental health in older people has been\nrecognised as a modern epidemic (Salman,\n2017<\/a>; BBC Sounds, 2018<\/a>;\nCoughlan, 2018<\/a>) but\nfor people with wounds that go on and on with no end in sight, this issue can\nbe particularly upsetting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cinderella service<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Wounds can have a social stigma with\nserious relational repercussions for the elderly. One patient mentioned that\nher daughter and granddaughter would not visit her at home as often as they had\nused to because they could not stand the smell from her wound. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another elderly patient described\nfeeling self-conscious on a bus journey to a wound clinic when a boy stared at\nhim throughout the journey. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don’t think I will go on the bus again\u201d, he said.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The distressing sense of isolation can be\nheightened because wound healing is still dubbed as a Cinderella service (Sandoz,\n2016<\/a>; Young, 2016) that attracts relatively little interest in the medical profession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lindsay Leg Club<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For some elderly patients with wounds, visits from district nurses can provide a sense of relational continuity they might seek to maintain \u2013 sometimes at a dangerous cost to their physical health.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs district nurses we used to go to people’s homes and we knew that sometimes they would use something like a knitting needle [\u2026] and poke it in there to make the wounds [\u2026] because otherwise if we weren\u2019t going to visit them anymore because they\u2019d healed, they might not see many people\u201d, said a lead of one Lindsay Leg Club. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Lindsay Leg Club is a charity based on\na social-medical model of care provision run by district and practice nurses\noff the NHS premises, that offers wound care support for many elderly people in\nthe community, including after their wounds heal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Social\ninfrastructure has a huge potential to improve physical and mental outcomes for\nelderly patients with wounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018No man is an island\u2019 may be a clich\u00e9 (Beer,\n1997) but Lindsay Leg Clubs have a transformative potential to bring people\ntogether to heal better by making friends, learning from one another and being\nmotivated by peer pressure in the company of nurses interested in leg ulcer\ncare. As one patient-turned-secretary of a Leg Club said, it is, first and\nforemost, a social occasion to share a cup of tea, play bingo, or have their toenails\ncut. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf a patient\u2019s head is okay, the rest\nheals as well\u201d, the Leg Club lead added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Healing and management<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There are many success stories from Leg Clubs across the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One is of a patient who had had weeping leg ulcers that kept her indoors for four years before she was persuaded to come to her local Leg Club. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn’t realise other people had the\nsame problem as me\u201d, she reportedly said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After three months, her life was\nchanged. She started going out with her daughter and getting her own groceries.\nShe would go to every Leg Club outing. After one year, her legs were healed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot because we did anything different\nbut just because she was happy, and she was more mobile\u201d, the Leg Club lead\nsaid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The patient did not develop a single\nulcer until she passed away eight years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social support is important in the healing\nand management of chronic wounds in elderly people, so it is important to make\nthem aware of the presence of such social infrastructure in their locality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Established in 1995 and operating\nacross Great Britain, Lindsay Leg Clubs offer social-medical assistance for\npeople with wounds as well as ongoing support for people whose wounds have\nhealed, and all providers of care to elderly patients should make them aware of\ntheir local club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information on Leg Club\nlocations and the possibility of getting involved as a volunteer, visit their website<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Anna Galazka<\/strong><\/a> is an Early Career Researcher and University Teacher at Cardiff Business School. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She completed her PhD in organisation studies in the Cardiff Business School earlier this year and continues to focus her research on understanding the possibilities and power of social innovation in the context of managing chronic conditions, such as wounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article originally appeared in a wound care special issue of Innov-age Magazine<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/h4>\n\n\n\n