Churchill fellowship to investigate wound healing
Michelle Gibb, who is a nurse practitioner in wound management at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), has been awarded a prestigious Churchill Fellowship to pursue her passion to improve wound healing in Australia.
She has been granted a Bob and June Prickett Churchill Fellowship.
The fellowship, in honour of Sir Winston Churchill, offers recipients the opportunity to travel overseas and make contact with experts in their field.
She will spend four weeks at the Wound Healing Research Unit in Cardiff, Wales and then two weeks at the Copenhagen Wound Healing Centre in Denmark to explore how their multidisciplinary wound care teams are making a difference to wound healing.
“This is an opportunity for me to get a first-hand look at how different members of the health care team including doctors, allied health practitioners such as podiatrists, occupational therapists and nurses, work together as a team,” Miss Gibb said.
“Over there, wound care is a medical speciality, whereas in Australia it is not. I want to look at how their models work at providing improved healthcare outcomes and how we might be able to adopt them in Australia.”
With 1-3% of people aged over 60 experiencing a chronic wound like a leg ulcer, Miss Gibb said it was essential to look for ways to improve wound healing.
“Chronic wounds are an important and costly medical issue and cost Australia’s health care system more than $500 million a year,” she said.
“These wounds are painful and debilitating, resulting in extreme reductions in the quality of life of sufferers across months or years, or potentially decades.
“For many patients living with chronic non-healing wounds, amputation of an affected limb is the only option.
“If we can find better ways to heal these wounds, then we will be making a big difference to people’s lives.”
QUT is a leader in research in wound healing in Australia and offers a Wound Healing Community Outreach Service aimed at improve healing rates and quality of life for sufferers of chronic wounds.
For more information visit www.healthclinics.qut.edu.au
