Powys Leg Clubs

I think the Leg Clubs are a very worthwhile organisation to be involved with. It's very useful to see that there are alternative delivery mechanisms for caring for patients and I think we sometimes underestimate how good the social support can be and how much patients can be involved and engaged in caring for themselves. And that's one of the things I see with the Leg Clubs, certainly when you interact with the Leg Club members and the staff that staff the Leg Clubs, what you see is total commitment to the total care of the patients and helping them get better and helping them help themselves to get better. I think the Leg Clubs are a very good set up, simply because when I feel I need to go, I can just go. I haven't got to book an appointment and if anything is found wrong, they can refer me to whoever I need to be referred to. When I first came in contact with the leg clubs I was still working as a district nurse and I sort of was asking why is this better than the clinics that I'm running, why is this better than me visiting patients and being able to give them individualized care and as they say the the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Our first leg club opened so I sat and I watched with a a little bit of scepticism and then I started thinking, do you know what, this is working. And then as my role progressed and I came into tissue viability I then went back with a new set of eyes and could see actually, do you know what, this is working as well as and in some cases better than what we were doing. So talked to different teams, looked at how we could improve work with them and then we started opening other clubs. I'm Father Roy, I'm the Chair of the Leg Club Organising Committee and I was introduced to it simply because I knocked my legs up on my motorbike and they ulcerated and I spent two years suffering these ulcerations which these weekly attention by the nursing staff here managed to heal up very well. I think the thing that really works with the model, the social model, is the person, it's the member that's at the centre of it. It's not fitting into a district nurses routine, it's not fitting into a dressing regime, it's fitting into what they want to do and when they want to do it.