Mary James is a district nurse team leader and Leg Club Lead for one of the Worcester Leg Clubs. Since qualifying in 1990 she worked on elderly medical wards and gynaecology, before working in Primary care, at first as a community staff nurse, and subsequently as a district nurse team leader.

Working in the community has given her a passionate interest in tissue viability and she has been a member of the Worcestershire County Tissue Viability team for over 10 years, promoting evidence based practice. After meeting Ellie Lindsay at one of the team meetings, she realised that the Leg Club model represented a new direction in lower limb care which encouraged patients to take more responsibility for their own health, offered them peer support and gave them access to staff trained specifically in leg ulcer management and in keeping legs healthy. She set up the first Worcester Leg Club in 2006, which now has a membership of about 250, of whom we treat 25 - 30 members per afternoon.

She has audited and advised a number of other Leg Clubs, thus ensuring that they all maintain similar high standards of patient care.