Clare Mechen: Enhancing working relationships within the community

I work for the Adam practice down in Dorset which is a relatively large GP practice. We have a wide variety of patients from all different social backgrounds and quite a high proportion of elderly patients. My first start of developing a leg club was when I did an analysis of our treatment room appointments, found that about 50% of them were for lower leg care, so 50% of our practice nurse work was simply for lower leg club and we were having to try and fit everything else around that. And liaising with our district nurse colleagues as well, found that they had probably 60-65% of their workload was for lower limb care. So it inspired me to try and think, how do we do something different? We need to change what we were doing because certainly wasn't working and was having huge demands for everybody and a lot of our patients at the time seemed to be quite low in their self-esteem, didn't seem to take care too much of themselves. So I looked around at different ideas, different models and was directed towards the Lindsay Leg Club Foundation. Did a bit more exploring into the idea and went to see the wonderful Bradford on Avon leg cup and took a GP colleague with me and we were completely inspired and we talked for about two hours on the way home how what we could do and how it would work in our area and that was sort of my light bulb moment in starting and so momentum started from there really. We did some coffee mornings, got some interest for some volunteers, got interest for some of our patients and thought yeah this really could work so I did an integrated working with the district nurse team as well because we wanted to very much make sure we were trying to come from both practice and district nurse angle and we opened we've got a very great team of volunteers who helped the team set set up a leg club and we opened in October 2015 as I've probably said many times today. We've had about 22 members come through the door and we were a bit like startled rabbits in the headlights thinking what are we done? Is it gonna work? What's going to happen? But the momentum has just grown from there and it's been a fantastic journey over the last couple of years. We grew so big that we had to move from we were originally in a church hall and we had to move at at the end of last year to Legion Hall, which was a much bigger premises for us because we simply had outgrown the other one. It's a fantastic leg club. We have over 300 members. We clinically treat probably 35 to 40 patients in the morning, but many more turn up simply for the social aspect as well so and our patient outcomes have been for as far as healing rates have really significantly improved as well as the reoccurrence rates as well so we're doing obviously the well leg regime really helps with that patient education keeping their legs healthy and that real holistic approach so yeah we say what what I suppose one of the biggest surprise we actually see quite a lot of men, probably not far of 50% of our members are men each week and I suppose that was a bit of a learning curve, I didn't realise there was such a need for men with lower leg problems but they really enjoy the leg club, they all met friends and they come along, they socialise, drink tea, coffee, chat, play cards, get involved in the social activities that go on and it's just continuing to grow really. Our volunteer team are fantastic, they do lots of social events. So one of them, one of the volunteers jumped out of a plane to raise funds and took all and all the members went off to a local garden, Exway Gardens and went for a tour around the gardens. So the transport was paid for, their entry was paid for and they had a cream tea and had a great social time. They've also done trips around their local pool harbour, been for cream teas elsewhere and market days. Also one of our volunteers did a concert specifically raising money. She had an ear on the region about she sold about 500 tickets for that and that raised an amazing amount which has sort of helped fund a minibus for our members to come along each week so we can have patients who maybe have mobility problems, so they aren't truly housebound, they just need assistance to get out, which has been hugely beneficial.