The Foundation Urgo award

The University of Huddersfield, together with Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, have recently worked successfully together to win a prestigious award worth £19 000.  The Foundation Urgo award was presented at the Wounds UK conference in Harrogate, November 2011, and will allow the team to conduct a year-long programme of work relating to wound care in patients undergoing operations on their spine.  The University of Huddersfield’s Dr Karen Ousey (Reader Advancing Clinical Practice, School of Human and Health Sciences) and Dr Ross Atkinson (Spinal Research Coordinator from the Departments of Spinal and Neurosurgery at Salford Royal) submitted a funding proposal on behalf of the collaborating team in June this year to the Urgo Board, which consists of UK experts in wound care and tissue viability.  The project entails analysing data relating to previous patients who have undergone surgical treatment for secondary tumours of the spine at Salford’s leading spinal unit.  The aim of the project is to find out more about the key factors which affect wound healing and may contribute to surgical site infection in this group of patients.  The team will then produce a patient information leaflet to describe how infection can be prevented, as well as a guideline for hospital staff, with the aim of improving the quality of life for these cancer patients. 

The Salford team consists of Dr Ross Atkinson (Spinal Research Coordinator), Mr Sathish Kumar (Spinal Fellow), Linda Upton (Specialist Spinal Nurse) and Mr J Bradley Williamson (Consultant in Spinal Surgery and Chair of the Division of Neurosciences and Renal Medicine).  The Huddersfield team includes Dr Karen Ousey (Reader Advancing Clinical Practice) and Dr John Stephenson (Senior Lecturer in Health and Biomedical Statistics).