Consultants of the Lindsay Leg Club Foundation
Dr Hildegard Charles
Initially Hildegard qualified and worked in Germany, subsequently she qualified in both the USA and Great Britain where she married and continued her career. This gave her a broad perspective of health care in different cultures and areas of nursing from paediatrics, intensive care and community practice.
While working as a community nurse in London she became keenly aware of the physical and emotional suffering of patients with leg ulceration. This motivated her to take a special interest in the treatment and care of people with suffering from this condition. It lead her to undertake a trial investigating the effects short-stretch compression bandages have on venous leg ulcerations, which at that time were little known in the United Kingdom.
The trial produced a significant increased rate of healing among venous leg ulcer patients and dramatically improved their quality of life. As a result she initiated a specialist clinic and introduced this new type of compression bandaging throughout the PCT. Encouraged by this development she became motivated to further enhance her formal education culminating in a Doctorate.
Her dedication to clinical practice expanded into, teaching, audits, research both quantitative and qualitative, publications, professional societies, writing and implementing guidelines and service level agreements for various Primary Care Trusts.
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