Author: Garreth

Health and Inactivity Conference 2020

Health and Inactivity 2020 conference

30 April 2020
“Prevention is better than cure“
Royal Society of Medicine

This conference aims to clearly articulate current evidence and provide insights on research, issues and solutions: the increasing demands on health and social care, obesity, old age, economic costs of treatment, Physical inactivity and Moving Medicine.

The event will tackle how to adopt a preventative health approach in your local areas and communities through the promotion and prescription of physical activity. It will seek to address the current skills gap across healthcare in this regard and provide a blueprint for the future delivery of health and social care.…

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Mental and physical health: practical ways to improve care

Two new outputs have been published by the Q Lab and Mind on improving care for people living with both mental and physical health problems:

  1. A practical guide to improving care that includes ideas, challenges to prepare for and examples to learn from.
  2. A set of service principles that can be used to inform decisions about improving, designing or commissioning services across mental health and persistent back and neck pain.

The outputs are a result of the 12-month partnership between the Q Improvement Lab (part of Q, delivered by the Health Foundation) and Mind – the mental health charity – on improving care across mental and physical health.…

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FLS-DB annual report 2020

The Fracture Liaison Service Database Annual report 2020, published in January by the Royal College of Physicians, provides the third national benchmark for the performance of FLSs at the patient level.

There were 58,979 of an expected 322,660 patients who sustained a fragility fracture in 2018 across England and Wales were reported on in the Fracture Liaison Service Database (FLS-DB). The FLS-DB used eleven key performance indicators (KPIs) for this report to measure secondary fracture prevention.

With over 300,000 fragility fractures in England and Wales detected every year in patients aged 50 years and over (NHFD, 2019), secondary fracture prevention is more important than ever.…

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Guest blog: A Decade of Real Change

by Clare Jacklin, Chief Executive, NRAS

I heard a good joke during the Christmas break –

Question: What do you think next year will bring?
Answer: How would I know…? I don’t have 2020 vision!

Albert Einstein is widely credited with saying, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.”

Now, I’m not for a moment saying we’re all going insane but I wonder how many of you reading this feel (as I do) a sense of déjà vu that we’ve heard the same thing over and over but little change has occurred.…

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MSK health is as important as heart health

by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA

Happy New Year to all our readers. The start of the new year is a time to reflect on our successes in 2019 and to look forward to what can be done in 2020.

Some of my highlights from 2019 were the annual lecture on mental health and MSK, our roundtables on pain and on mental health and our webinars. The webinars have been very popular with thousands of people watching them live or in recording.…

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HMSA out and about

HMSA Chair, Hannah Ensor, was at St Thomas’s Hospital in November, manning an HMSA stand to make contact with a number of staff and patients. Hannah spread the HMSA’s awareness and positive self-management approach, and as always, the message was well received and the HMSA gained several new professional followers as a result!

January #HypnOT event

In January HMSA has a new live event for members. #HypnOT is the brainchild of HMSA’s resident Occupational Therapist Jo Southall, and Kim Clayden, our Social Media Manager and a qualified Solution-Focused Psychotherapy & Clinical Hypnotherapist.…

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The Transformation of MSK Physiotherapy Services – learning from Scotland

The Transformation of MSK Physiotherapy Services – a practical example

Friday 17 January 2020 12:30pm

What can services in England learn from a Scottish experience? General practice in Midlothian is currently experiencing considerable capacity and sustainability challenges, with MSK making up a significant proportion of this demand. Half the practices were operating with restricted lists as a result of increasing demand: a demand which is predicted to quickly rise as the influx of new housing has resulted in Midlothian being the fastest growing local authority area in Scotland.…

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How integrated care is set to improve outcomes for those with comorbidities

Guest blog by William Pett – Senior Policy Advisor, NHS Confederation

As people grow older, health conditions often become both more complex and chronic. Evidence shows that rates of those living with multimorbidity rise significantly with age; a recent study revealed that 30% of adults aged 45 to 64 years report at least two chronic conditions, increasing to 65% of adults aged 65 to 84 years and more than 80% for those above 85 years old.

For older people living with multimorbidity, musculoskeletal conditions are common.…

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New webinar: Cauda equina syndrome

What everyone working with back pain needs to know about Cauda equina syndrome

Friday 21 February 2020, 12.30pm

Cauda equina syndrome (CES) is a rare condition that affects the nerves in the spine supplying the bladder, bowel and sexual function. Identification and subsequent urgent action is required to avoid permanent damage to these essential organs. Delays in diagnosis can have devastating and life changing consequences for patients and result in high cost negligence claims.

This webinar will be of interest to any health professional treating patients with low back pain, particularly those seeing this patient group in pre-surgical settings.…

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General Election 2019 arthritis pledges

Versus Arthritis would like to thank everyone who supported their aims during the election campaign:

  • Almost 2,000 people asked their candidates to pledge to champion the needs of people with arthritis;
  • 6,000 emails were sent to candidates across the four nations;
  • Hundreds of candidates tweeted and emailed their support.

People can still add their voice by sending a message to the MP in their constituency about what it’s like to live with arthritis and why they need to take action. Visit the General Election page on the VA website.