Just a click away…

With the plethora of educational courses and study days on offer around the world, accessing the best wound care education can be a daunting prospect. But, perhaps the answer lies closer to home…

I struggle with too much choice. I can literally spend hours in my local DVD shop scouring the shelves before leaving with an Estonian art film and Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous. When confronted with a takeaway pizza menu I have been known to assume the foetal position and emit a low wail and my first foray into internet shopping almost broke me — ebay was a labyrinth of choice that had me up until three in the morning feverishly bidding for a pair of Japanese Koi carp (I don’t have a pond) and a fake degree from Harvard Business School.

The same is true of medical education, especially in wound care. A five-minute trawl through Google (another bane of my life – what happened to the humble encyclopaedia?) told me that in the coming months I could attend the Annual Canadian Association of Enterostomal Therapists Conference in Montreal; the Wound Ostomy Continence Nurses 43rd Annual Conference in New Orleans and the Annual meeting of the Austrian Wound Association in Salzburg, Austria. If my thirst for knowledge was still unquenched, I could round off with a quick jaunt to the New Zealand Wound Care Society Conference in Christchurch, New Zealand. Phew.

Now I’m sure all these events offer excellent learning opportunities and the chance to meet wound colleagues from all over the world, but apart from trying to choose which one to go to, I simply don’t have the time.

The good news is that help is at hand. On the 13 April, 2011 there is a second chance to attend the Wounds International Conference in Cape Town, South Africa.  OK, so you don’t get to climb Table Mountain like I did, but it does represent a unique opportunity to participate in a global wound care event without actually getting on a plane.

Home page of the Wounds International Virtual Exhibition

Wounds International encourages wide access to free education and much of the content from our first global conference will be available online. This will include a virtual exhibition, filmed sessions and a host of downloadable resources that aim to support the continuing educational needs of wound care clinicians worldwide. Among the individual sessions are:

• Wound infection: diagnosis, prevention and treatment with David Leaper
• Pressure ulcers with Prisca Adejumo (Africa), Keryln Carville (Australasia), Zena Moore (Europe)
• Wound Exudate with Greg Schultz (N America), Geoff Sussman (Australasia), Patricia Grocott (Europe)
• Chronic Wounds: Establishing an Accurate Diagnosis in Leg Ulcers with Helen Edwards (Australasia), Peter Vowden (Europe), Kathryn Vowden (Europe), Gary Sibbald (N America)
• Chronic Wounds: Tackling Lower Limb Oedema with John Macdonald (N America), David Gray (Europe), KS Bose (India)

Symposia module on the Wounds International Virtual Exhibition site

So, if you don’t have the time to take a round-the-world trip and would rather learn as much as you can about wound care without leaving your desk, then the Wounds International Virtual Conference is for you. And the best bit? You get to eat your pizza while you watch…

For more information about the launch, click here.

Jason Beckford-Ball from the Wounds International HQ in London.