Former Chair, Dr David Foster: Being a Trustee of the Lindsay Leg Club Foundation

It's been an interesting journey with the Lindsay Leg Club Foundation because I first got interested in it through reflecting back on my own clinical practice and I started as a nursing auxiliary deep in the last century and saw lots of people there with leg ulcers and understood that the treatment was long standing and there were real problems with their social isolation and it was when I came to my national role at the Department of Health that I heard about the leg clubs and the foundation and met Ellie Lindsay and visited the Mottingham Club that I actually saw in practice what a good model this is. The healing rates are superb, the nature of the club means that people don't feel so socially isolated, they have a lot of holistic treatment about all the other issues that are important to them as well as their leg care and it just became such an obvious thing to the poor. So the more I knew about it and it was very interesting, the more I think it was recognized that I could help out by becoming a trustee which I did initially and then have become chairman-elect which I'm looking forward to enormously over the next year or so. So it really goes back to the roots of my nursing and very practical early career making much more sense of what now can be a really important model of care that's different and very effective. I think based on my experience of visiting leg clubs the enormous camaraderie that there is both between the club members and the professionals working in that situation. And nurses, particularly in the community, have got an image of dealing with leg ulcers and only leg ulcers and all the time. And of course there is a scope for much wider practice than that. But the role that nurses have in dealing with leg ulcers means that they can help people heal much more quickly, they can help the whole person. So this isn't just about treating a wound, it's much more broad than that and it's much more satisfying work. And I've met the nurses who've seen wounds heal and make sure that the people are living much better lives, but they're still keeping contact with the club because it's so important to them for other reasons, both health reasons and social reasons. And And it's that connection, that network, that team working, that camaraderie that's just so important, I think. I think one of the strong features about the Foundation is its relationship with industry partners. And that partnership has played out to be really important, not just about wound care products, but about the relationships people have about keeping the clubs going, about the effective way that treatment can be delivered, The challenge that there is between the foundation and the partners to make sure that actually we're all in this for the same reason and it's not just about one particular product is really important as well. And I've noticed that so many of the people that I deal with from the industry and in that partnership relationship have that in their hearts as well and it's not just about the profit and the product and all the rest of it, but that collaboration, that working together for people with really debilitating conditions is crucial to that relationship and that partnership.