Alan Elstone: The role of the vascular nurse specialist

I've been involved for a few years. Last year I was invited by LE to come and give a workshop on venous intervention and timely diagnosis, which is a theme that's continued into this year. Lower limbs venous ulceration traditionally have been fairly conservatively managed. There was little thought, probably because of the methods of treatment of treating perhaps the underlying venous disease or the venous incompetence with the more modern sort of endovenous treatments which have been around and available for sort of over ten years that has changed so it opens up the gateway really for treating people perhaps in later life and that wouldn't been a traditionally able to have sort of surgery under general anesthesia so it means that patients therefore just don't have a conservative option sometimes it's been called a sort of palliative option in the past, but certainly a conservative intervention with compression, they can actually have treatment of the underlying, possibly contributory cause with endovenous treatment. So that was coming from a vascular perspective and not necessarily just from a sort of tissue viability or generalist practice, it was much more looking at perhaps what we could offer. So it was beginning to perhaps getting people to think about what options are available, because ultimately the most important person is the patient, the individual in front of us as practitioners, so it's really about what are the best options for them, not only in the current situation perhaps with active ulceration, but also in the future with a view to recurrence. And I think people are more aware of, certainly perhaps patients and individuals are more aware of perhaps the options that are open to them. And there is a need to move practice forward. We can't keep doing the same thing sort of year in year out really we have to look at a way forward so I think change is quite positive and it was quite good to come and talk to people and also as well this year it's pretty much I can see that sort of theme developing which is good which is good to see and we're not just seeing the same thing year in year out.