Guest Blog: Musings from Primary Care

AlanNye-largesquare by Dr. Alan Nye, President Primary Care Rheumatology Society, Executive Director, Pennine MSK Partnership Ltd.

This is my final month as President of the Primary Care Rheumatology Society and it’s been a very interesting 2 years for me. I apologise that this blog is England-centric, but England is the totality of my NHS experience and I cannot write about areas outside of my experience. I would like to cover, albeit briefly, three areas that over the past few years have become very dear to my heart:

  • MSK training for primary care
  • MSK networks and commissioning MSK services
  • Shared decision-making

For a long time the lack of training for front line GPs has been a real issue for the NHS.…

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Guest Blog – Collaboration and Genuine Innovation

guestblog-MCCby Maurice Cheng, Chief Executive of The Institute of Osteopathy I’m sitting here on a Sunday morning writing this blog post, having missed the deadline, wondering what I could reflect on that would be interesting for ARMA colleagues. The reason I’m late with this is because we’ve just relaunched the British Osteopathic Association as the Institute of Osteopathy; finally got our phase one new website and branding up this week (dead links, typos and all); finalised our annual convention programme in October and embedded it on an event microsite; published a new format members’ journal; and signed off on an extraordinarily long career and lifestyle census questionnaire for osteopathic practitioners – all in the same week.…

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Guest Blog – On being a bit short for your weight

Judi-Rhys-guest-blogby Judi Rhys, Chief Executive of Arthritis Care I recently attended a plenary session at the European Federation of National Associations of Orthopaedics and Traumatology Congress. The presentations were concerned with the ‘global musculoskeletal challenge’ and the ‘imminent avalanche of demand’ ahead. Many of the speakers referred to the rise in worldwide obesity and the link between obesity and osteoarthritis. A review of research in this area suggests an obese person is 14 times more likely to develop knee osteoarthritis, compared with a person of normal weight.…

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Guest Blog: Debbie Cook – December 2013

DebbieCook1Musculoskeletal conference – the patient story

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at the Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance’s MSK2013 conference about the patient experience.

I was honoured to be asked, to be given the opportunity of talking to commissioners, Healthcare professionals and other patient group representatives. I shared the patient journey slot with Jo from Arthritis Care.

I presented the highlights, key messages from our recent patient survey. It was great to have data representing the journey and opinions from 1630 people with a diagnosis of AS.…

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