CEO Update | ARMA

CEO update: The NHS Long-Term Plan – it’s what happens next that matters

by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA

The NHS Long-Term plan was published earlier this week. I was pleased to see quite a bit about musculoskeletal health throughout the document. There has been lots of immediate reaction, positive and negative. I think now is the time to focus on the positive, so here are my highlights.

The first reference to musculoskeletal health comes early on, (para 1.17) but seems to be mostly about frailty and older people. Great, I thought as I read this, but MSK isn’t just about older people.…

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CEO update – New Year’s resolutions

Happy New Year to all our readers.

As I write this, everyone is talking new year’s resolutions and I’m thinking about resolutions for ARMA and the MSK community.

ARMA is seeing the new year in with the start of a new strategy. We’re resolving to use this to make our work more focused and more effective, with an emphasis on collaboration and engagement. We hope that you will resolve to collaborate and engage with us. Our strength is in our membership, supporters and stakeholders – it’s by working together that we can bring about change.…

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CEO update – Exciting and uniting us

November has been a very active month for ARMA. Not just in the sense that we are doing a lot but also that a lot of it has been about physical activity, which seems to be exciting and uniting the MSK community.

The ARMA lecture featured three speakers with different perspectives on the subject. A wide range of people attended, bringing GPs into conversations with public health professionals, parkrun with sport therapists, pain specialists with the DWP, Sport England with Healthwatch.…

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Mental health and MSK rising up the agenda

There seems to have been a lot of mental health in my work in recent weeks. I’m pleased for two reasons. Personally, as someone who used to work for Mind it’s a subject that remains dear to my heart. But also, because this increase in mental health related activity is a sign that the mental health sector is focusing increasingly on the needs of people with long-term conditions. At the moment that’s focusing much more on conditions like diabetes or cardiovascular disease.…

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MSK – Not a challenge anyone can solve alone

I have just returned from the British Orthopaedic Association centenary congress, where ARMA had a session on integrated pathways for orthopaedics. One thing that struck me about the event was the recognition of the importance of multi-disciplinary working. There were significant numbers of delegates who were not orthopaedic surgeons, particularly physiotherapists. A session I attended on hip fracture covered the crucial role of physios in rehabilitation.

It is easy to understand how any professional can become focused on their part of the pathway, delivering the surgery or the rehab to a high standard.…

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Rising up the agenda

Musculoskeletal conditions are common – we all know that. But it hadn’t struck me until recently just how common compared to other long term conditions. 17 million people in the UK have an MSK condition. Compare that with the 850,000 with dementia and think about how much we talk about dementia. It’s a similar picture for other conditions: diabetes, 3.5 million people, cardiovascular, 7 million. Only mental health exceeds the prevalence of MSK conditions.

Of course, we are rightly worried about dementia.…

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No health without MSK health

“No health without MSK health”. Those were the words of our guest speaker at the ARMA AGM and they clearly struck a chord with members. They were on my mind last week when I attended a consultation meeting held by NHS England about the new ten-year plan for the NHS. At the moment MSK health doesn’t get as much profile as conditions such as mental health, cancer or cardiovascular. Not to downplay the importance of these conditions, but MSK health underpins all aspects of our ability to be independent and lead the active lives we want.…

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From running to professional support: The role of the voluntary sector in MSK

About a year ago I joined parkrun and I still have the enthusiasm of a new convert. It’s a great way to start the weekend, running in a park with about 300 other people, improving your MSK health as you go, and then coffee and a chat after. So I was delighted to hear that parkrun UK and the Royal College of GPs have launched an initiative encouraging GP practices to become ‘parkrun practices’. GPs in this film talk about why they take part in parkrun and suggest it to patients.…

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Harnessing a collective focus to transform MSK services

Innovation, transformation, improvement; everyone is trying to change health services for the better from NHS England to ARMA and each of our members, from the top and the centre to the local and the frontline.

There is also a lot being written about this. Last month’s guest blog looked at a report from the innovation unit with the Health Foundation on spread of innovation in the NHS. This month I’ve been reading a report from the Kings Fund on transformation. The report, or at least the summary, is worth a read; even though the four examples are not MSK-related, the key messages are very relevant.…

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Not just what to do

There is so much going on in the world of MSK it is sometimes hard to know where to start. I am constantly reminded of the vast range of good practice that exists out there. In the last few weeks I have heard about all kinds of activity, from trialling health trainers for joint pain in community settings, to the development of a toolkit for good MSK health for mobile workers.

But how do people working locally to improve services know what they might be able to achieve?…

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