Author: Garreth

NOA blog: Sustainability in Orthopaedic Surgery

The National Orthopaedic Alliance’s latest guest blog post, Sustainability in Orthopaedic Surgery, comes from Irrum Afzal, Vipin Asopa, Vipul Patel and Deiary Kader of the South West London Elective Orthopaedic Centre:

“Sustainability in surgery continues to gain great traction as global warming and climate change continue to become an ever-growing problem. The NHS is the largest single contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in the public sector and NHS England has an annual carbon footprint of 24.9 million tonnes of CO2e.…

Read more of this article

NOA Annual Members’ Conference a success

The 2021 NOA Annual Members’ Conference held on 20 October was an opportunity for staff representing the National Orthopaedic Alliance’s member organisations, patient representatives and NOA partners from across the country, including ARMA, to share achievements, address shared challenges and discuss what’s in store for orthopaedics in the future.

Read more about the day and view a highlights video here.

Introducing The Cornwall Arthritis Trust

Guest Blog by Professor Tony Woolf, Acting Chair and Secretary, Cornwall Arthritis Trust

Cornwall is well known for its coastline, beaches and mixture of rugged countryside with wooded valleys, great gardens and wonderful vistas. Poldark county. A visitor’s paradise but it has all the problems of rural and coastal communities with an economic dependency on agriculture and tourism and a low pay economy. Economic hardship is not immediately obvious but there are Cornish estates that rank among the highest in the league tables for multiple deprivation, and it is one of only two regions of the UK that was eligible for special assistance from Brussels as a result of having incomes per head less than 75% of the EU average.…

Read more of this article

Celebrating progress

2021 has been a year of progress for ARMA and for MSK. We know that all our readers will be feeling exhausted. This has been a tough year for anyone working in health. It has also been the year when MSK began to get the profile it deserves with the new Best MSK Health programme in England and development of a new MSK Framework and clinical leads in Wales. We all know that we need to do things differently, that the pandemic has only made worse those problems that already existed.…

Read more of this article

Goodboost recognized in Fit For Life Awards

fit for lifeIn 2021, the Fit for Life Foundation Awards recognized GoodBoost alongside two other organisations that embody an innovative and impactful approach to improving the health and fitness of older people.  

GoodBoost were cited for their creation of personalized exercise tools, and praised for combining their clinical knowledge with technology to create affordable and easy-to-use water-based exercises.

These exercises, associated with Swim England’s Water Wellbeing programme, are to be expanded to more pools across the country after an independent health-economic analysis has shown that each pool delivering Good Boost creates more than £90,000 of health savings through reduced appointments and health procedures.…

Read more of this article

National Voices Timely Access to Care

A new publication from National Voices Timely access to care: Principles for recovery argues for an inclusive, equitable and person-centred recovery, focusing on the whole person, in the context of their lives, and the whole system, and the context within which it is operating. There are three sets of recommendations: one for government and system leaders, one for people planning and delivering services and one for the VCSE.

Access the document here.

Psoriasis Association’s Facebook Live sessions

New videos of Facebook Live sessions on psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis and lifestyle now available

The Psoriasis Association is delighted to bring you recordings from the two Facebook Live sessions that we held during Psoriasis Awareness Week 2021. The videos feature information and advice from experts in nutrition and exercise, based on this year’s Psoriasis Awareness Week theme – lifestyle factors that may be important to consider when living with psoriasis or psoriatic arthritis – including diet and exercise.

The first video ‘Pso: Let’s Talk Food’ sees Consultant Dermatologist and nutrition expert, Dr Thiviyani Maruthappu, and Professor of Health Psychology/Behavioural Medicine at Cardiff University, Professor Christine Bundy, examine the evidence for nutrition in psoriasis.…

Read more of this article

Pain Forecast survey

Manchester uni banner

In 2016, the Centre for Epidemiology Versus Arthritis at the University of Manchester ran a large study, collecting data about people’s symptoms and comparing this to the weather.

Using this data, the researchers are now aiming to build a pain forecast. This will be like a weather forecast but used for predicting pain severity in the near future. Being able to forecast pain severity in this way will provide benefits for patients in the future.

In this second phase, a survey will ask people with chronic pain what information that they would be interested in receiving about pain severity.…

Read more of this article

NASS driving service improvements

New report sheds light on game-changing innovations in axial SpA care

The report, Driving Improvements in Axial SpA Services: Building Foundations through Aspiring to Excellence was produced and published by the National Axial Spondyloarthritis Society (NASS), and launched on 22 October 2021. This is the first detailed account of service improvement projects undertaken by rheumatology teams across the UK as part of the Aspiring to Excellence programme. 

Every team on the programme is working on a project that will improve diagnosis, treatment and care for patients with axial SpA.…

Read more of this article