Developing multidisciplinary education programmes in Uganda
This article describes the context for and development of a tissue viability training programme in a low-to-middle income country setting: Uganda. The impetus for the project was the personal experience of the first author, a tissue viability nurse in the UK with family connections to Uganda.
When I learnt that my grandmother was weak and was bedbound, I thought I ought to utilize my 18 years of knowledge and skills in pressure area care obtained from my studies here in the UK.
I took it upon myself to invest in preventive measures for tissue breakdown, including incontinence pads, barrier creams, guidance on nutrition, assessment tools etc, and shipped these over to my grandmother in Uganda. I thought I had played my part, but eventually, when I was able travel and visit my grandmother, I realised that my local colleagues in Uganda were not trained in these assessment skills because her skin had broken down. When I arrived, they informed me that ‘she has a “ekiwoundu!”’, which meant she had a chronic wound. They were preventing me from looking at it, but I insisted. I wanted to assess this ‘chronic wound’ personally to determine the appropriate management.
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