LAUSR

lymphoedema I hear many stories of lack of compliance and concordance from health professionals regarding their patients, or of frustration when faced with patients who cannot take control of their condition and move forward. A recent in-house survey regarding the ‘reasons why nurses lose their passion’, carried out among therapists attending training by the Lymphoedema Training Academy, cited one of the reasons as ‘uncompliant patients’. Running a training academy it is easy to reflect on the evaluation of thousands of students and what their learning experience gives them along with the transfer of knowledge. We can improve peoples’ lives enormously if we just take a moment to ensure that learning has taken place. With the correct training and education, learning can equip the individual to move forward and take control of their life or their conditions. The theory of education has changed over the years, moving away from lecturetype sessions and the approach of ‘filling an empty vessel’ to one focused on more student involvement, with more emphasis on ‘active’ participation in education. Likewise, patient activation is described as the knowledge, skills and confidence required to manage health, particularly a lifelong condition (Hibbard and Gilburt, 2014). Lymphoedema is a chronic swelling of the tissues caused by lymphatic failure. It can have many different causes but is always due to a final failure of the lymphatic system, resulting in localised oedema, usually in a limb. The psychosocial consequences are huge, often leading the patient to depression, denial and reported ‘non-concordance’. The same can be true of lipoedema, which is often confused with lymphoedema and is actually an abnormal laying down of fat distribution in the limbs’ (Fetzer and Fetzer, Enhancing lymphoedema patients’ learning through education