Chronic Venous Disease of Lower Limbs

The aim of this project is to define assessment criteria for chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) in people with dark skin tones. It will inform future interventions and modifications to practice for the assessment of CVI in people with dark skin tones in a nurse led intervention to improve patient assessment. To achieve this there will be two parts to this study. 1. We will explore patient journeys and patient experiences of people with dark skin tones diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency. From this we will learn from people with dark skin tones about how they recognised skin changes in their lower legs to further inform clinical assessment guidance and techniques. We will also listen to their patient journey to identify what areas worked well and what could be developed. This will help us plan how care could be improved for similar people. 2. We will record how skin changes look and feel in people with dark skin tones and known venous disease, and photograph this. We will consider whether some additional techniques used in practice to look and feel the skin is useful and whether changing the colour balance and manipulating the photographs is useful to see these skin changes.