Improving Leg Ulcer Management In community Nursing and podiatry (ILUMIN)
The ILUMIN project aims to optimise the assessment and treatment of leg ulcer management in NHS community services, improving outcomes for patients through the implementation of the following three quality markers:
- Patients with a leg ulcer receiving an ABPI within 21 calendar days of being seen by the service.
- Patients with a venous/mixed aetiology leg ulcer being treated with highest level of compression therapy (where suitable).
- Patients with a venous/mixed aetiology leg ulcer in full compression, who are being treated with a 2-layerhosiery kit (where suitable).
Over the past 18 months the ILUMIN team have been working with community nursing teams to implement the ILUMIN plan through a co-design approach, to ensure that the project operates optimally in each location. The participating health care professionals have been collecting data on the three quality markers. They then use this information to audit their performance on a monthly basis and feed this back to their teams to drive improvements.
East Lancashire Hospitals Trust update
Data collection completed at the end of October in East Lancashire. Following a final workshop in November to share initial data finding and to discuss how teams were going to carry on with the improvements shown throughout the course of the project, the ILUMIN team have been writing up the final report which was submitted to the senior nursing team at the end of February.
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) update
Central MFT
Central MFT have been collecting data for the past 15 months. The ILUMIN team are keeping in close contact with each of the different area teams to support the nurses with the project and ensure that there is a steady supply of data collection to support improvements.
South MFT
South MFT started the ILUMIN project in October 2018 and the team have been meeting with the wound link nurses from the four areas on a monthly basis to discuss the project, data collection and start to share data findings showing how ILUMIN can rapidly start to make a difference in improved outcomes for patients.
North MFT
North MFT came on board in November 2018. This location has four ‘neighbourhoods’ which the ILUMIN team are working with to ensure as complete data collection as possible.
Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust (SRFT) update
SRFT have recently updated their Electronic Patient Record (EPR) to improve wound care data collection which will include information on the three quality markers for ILUMIN. The team are meeting with the clinical governance group in April to discuss progress.
ILUMIN is due to complete early summer 2019 and we look forward to sharing more updates with you then!
Date Published: 28/03/2019