The NHS agenda is increasingly focused on promoting self-care for patients with long-term conditions and
healthcare professionals are being encouraged to empower patients to become equal partners in their care. This
article discusses some of the self-care strategies that patients with venous leg ulceration (VLU) can undertake
to promote healing or prevent recurrence. The evidence base to support the effectiveness of these activities will
also be discussed. Furthermore, with the very real shift in wound care from the domain of specialist nurses to
clinicians working in primary care, namely general practice nurses (GPNs) (Guest et al, 2015), it is vital that they are
prepared and trained to care for patients with venous leg ulcers, the number of which is likely to rise with an ageing
population (Atkin and Tickle, 2016).