This month I have been working on a resource for social prescribing link workers which ARMA plans to publish in the autumn. It’s made me reflect on what a valuable role link workers can play in MSK health. We know that many people with MSK conditions need support with their mental health or have become lonely or isolated as result of their condition. Added to this they may have other conditions which are harder to manage as a result of their MSK health.…
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Category: CEO Update
CEO update: Change is possible
The NHS England BestMSK Health Collaborative has been making great progress during July. It’s fantastic to see the amount of focus that MSK is getting and the fact that the work is about systems, not individual services. If you haven’t already, I would urge you to sign up to the NHS Futures site so that you can access the resources and see progress. The latest publication is a High Impact Strategy with a series of recommendations spanning primary, secondary and community, and every MSK speciality.…
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Mental health and MSK
CEO update by Sue Brown
The launch by National Voices of their Ask Me How I Am report got me thinking about mental health. The report highlights many of the issues that ARMA has raised in relation to MSK. Mental health and MSK are not separate. Living with a long term painful condition which restricts your mobility is clearly going to have a psychological as well as a physical impact. Which is why ARMA has made mental health a priority area for our work in the last few years.…
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Equality, diversity and inclusion
by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
One of the priorities identified by our members for 2021 was health inequalities. We’ve recently begun discussing how this relates to MSK and what ARMA and our members might be able to do. In the course of discussions, I’ve discovered a few things which have surprised and shocked me. For instance, some newly qualified MSK professionals are choosing not to work in the NHS because of the level of racism they have experienced in NHS settings.…
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Ride the wave
by Sue Brown, ARMA CEO
There’s been an optimistic feel to ARMA in the last week. A big part of this is down to our first ever virtual annual lecture. “Great lecture and discussion. As a patient I feel much more positive after listening to this!” said one person in the chat. Andrew Bennett opened the lecture with an update on the BestMSK Health Collaborative. This was followed by a wide ranging panel discussion on partnership with Public Health, Health Education and people living with MSK conditions.…
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Delivering the Best MSK Health
by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
I write this one year after the first lockdown was announced. It’s been a year of extremes, from the devastating number of deaths to the incredible success of the vaccination programme. For me personally it has been a year of being proud of the community that ARMA exists to represent and support. It has been a year of incredible collaboration and connection.
Our patient member organisations in particular faced a deluge of enquiries, innovated to provide online support and somehow managed to keep vital helplines open.…
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Green shoots
As I write this, the sun outside my window is shining and swathes of blue and yellow crocuses bloom in the local parks. As if that were not enough to lift the spirits, last night saw the launch of NHS England’s Best MSK Health programme. ARMA has worked for many years to raise the profile of MSK health. We have made some progress, often in very specific areas, such as the introduction of First Contact MSK Practitioners a few years ago.…
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CEO update: Looking forward together
by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
Here we are back in lockdown, with the NHS under even more pressure and MSK services severely impacted. COVID-19 response is still dominating the work of ARMA, although we are also progressing plans for other work in 2021. There are some different issues for MSK this time around, and vaccination currently dominates our work. When some people with MSK conditions are vaccinated, the timings of MSK treatment may need to be considered.
I am delighted that ARMA can host a document setting out the principles for these timing decisions.…
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CEO update: Promoting MSK health
The incidence of MSK conditions, particularly neck and shoulder pain, has gone up during the pandemic. This represents a significant amount of pain that would not have happened without the pandemic changing the way we live and work. Which got me wondering how much of the pre-pandemic MSK conditions would have been preventable.
MSK ill-health represents many thousands of lives impacted and restricted by pain and poor mobility. However great the services we have, prevention is the better option where possible.…
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The spirit of #MSKTogether
About a year ago ARMA had a vision for a conference that would bring together stakeholders from across the MSK community to think about how we can work better together to improve the lives of people living with MSK conditions. Earlier this week that vision became a reality in the form of the Working Together conference.
The planning started back in January when I began to seek out people who were already doing this well. I had conversations with some amazing people doing incredible work to join up services across systems and to bring about excellent multi-disciplinary working.…
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