Eatons Hill’s Michelle Gibb will jet off to Europe in September to pursue her passion for nursing.

This month Ms Gibb was announced as one of 19 Queensland recipients of a Churchill Fellowship, a scheme that funds Australians to advance their expertise overseas.

She said receiving the Bob and June Prickett Churchill Fellowship, for developing health care practice in Australia, would enable her to further her innovative work in wound healing.

Ms Gibb, who runs a wound community outreach service at the Queensland University of Technology at Kelvin Grove, will head to the United Kingdom and Denmark to see how wound care practices there could be implemented in Australia.

“This opportunity is really to see how other wound care facilities overseas run their services, and in particular to see how multidisciplinary services can enhance wound healing outcomes for patients here,” she said.

“There’s really nothing like that in Australia already.”

Ms Gibb said the wound healing centres, in Cardiff and Copenhagen, were the first specialist facilities of their kind in the world.

“They were established with the sole purpose of treating people with wounds, whether they be acute or chronic, and they’ve also got an established reputation in education and research,” she said.

“Because wound management isn’t a medical speciality in Australia – it’s a very small field and only just emerging as an area of priority in terms of health care – there’s really nowhere for me to go but internationally to see how wound management services are organised and to learn more to benefit the Australian community.”

Ms Gibb said the majority of people she treated were aged over 60 years of age, while most patients aged between 78 and 85 years suffer from leg ulcers.

A nurse for 11 years, she said a “desire to help” saw her enter the profession.

“You go into nursing because you have a desire to help other people and that’s really what nursing is all about,” Ms Gibb said.

Fellow Churchill fellow Jonathon Barnes, from Arana Hills, will study timber conservation and repair techniques in the United Kingdom.

Queensland-based Churchill fellows are also seeking to improve fields ranging from indigenous health, homeless youth and reconstructive surgery, to training choir conductors, preserving historical buildings and turtle conservation.

Applications for the next round of Churchill Fellowships, valued at around $25,000 each, open on 1 November. Visit http://www.churchilltrust.com.au/