PATIENTS with skin diseases from across the UK have cause to thank Gwent experts for equipping the nurses who treat and care for them with some of the key skills they require.

But now a renowned training course for dermatology nurses - run from Newport's St Woolos Hospital - is having to relocate after becoming a victim of its own success.

Over 12 years, hundreds of nurses from dermatology units all over the UK have come to Newport for training in phototherapy, which involves the use of ultra-violet and visible light to treat a range of conditions including psoriasis, eczema and some cancers.

The four-day course is so popular there has been a six-month waiting list for places, and now with the dermatology ward at the hospital increasingly busy because of the light therapies it offers, and because of increasing NHS work, it will relocate to the University of Glamorgan in Pontypridd.

"We've run it at St Woolos three or four times a year and that's about 40 students a year. It's a four-day residential course," said consultant dermatologist Dr Alex Anstey.

"There are academic advantages in moving the course to the University of Glamorgan, given that it is an educational establishment, and the unit at St Woolos will still have a part to play. Students will visit us for hands-on experience."

Dr Anstey set up the course but said he has a "a fairly minor role" these days, and he paid tribute instead to medical secretary Linda Attwell, who is responsible for administering it, and to consultant medical physicist Dr Chris Edwards, who runs the academic side.

"They both invest significant time and effort. Linda, deals with the students and is their point of contact, and Chris has helped keep this course at the cutting edge of phototherapy and has been heavily involved in our phototherapy research programme," said Dr Anstey.

"The course fills up by reason of its reputation and there is probably not a dermatology unit in the UK that has not sent us a nurse. We've also one or two from overseas.

"Other units run courses, but phototherapy is such an integral part of dermatology these days and no-one else does what we do, so there is no competition.

"It is great that we will still be involved, because it has given us a very high profile as a department. It is quite something for a unit to have a reputation as a centre of excellence."

FORGING LINKS WITH DOCTORS OVERSEAS

DR ANSTEY is also helping the St Woolos dermatology unit forge links overseas, having become a visiting professor to Shanghai, in China.

He has visited Shanghai and lectured on photo-dermatology there, and has set up a programme enabling a doctor to come to Newport to train in photo-dermatology.

Dr Pengjie Wan is spending several months in Newport and will then return to Shanghai to help change dermatology services there, based on systems here.

"She is training here in research methods and doing a project, and she will then go back to China to complete her studies," said Dr Anstey, who is also keen to set up mutually beneficial research links.