Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance
Influencing policy and care together for best lifelong musculoskeletal health
Last month, Sarah Leyland, osteoporosis specialist nurse and clinical adviser at Royal Osteoporosis Society, presented information on osteoporosis and fractures, and the link between corticosteroid use and having rheumatoid arthritis.
You can watch a recording of the webinar on the NRAS Facebook page here.
NHS England has published a suite of eight decision support tools covering varying conditions along with guidance on how to use them and evaluating the impact.
Four of these relate to MSK conditions:
Decision support tools (DSTs), also called patient decision aids, support shared decision making (SDM) by making treatment, care and support options explicit, providing evidence-based information about the associated benefits and risks, and helping people to consider what matters most to them in relation to the possible outcomes, including doing nothing.…
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At the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society (NRAS), research helps develop and deliver services to best meet the needs of all those living with inflammatory arthritis. NRAS is planning to develop resources with practical information about managing stress levels. The ‘Stress Matters’ project is an NRAS initiative that aims to develop a better understanding on the topic and develop appropriate resources for people living with inflammatory arthritis (IA).
To kick off the project NRAS has developed a survey to gather your lived experiences of how stress impacts your arthritis as well as your insights into what sort of support, if any, you’ve found or have been offered, that helps.…
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NRAS launched their Wellbeing Courses in May and owing to their success the next set are now being released.
The NRAS Wellbeing Courses starting within the next month are:
The courses consist of either two or five/six weeks in length, meeting once a week online.…
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SMILE-RA is a unique and engaging e-learning experience for people with RA and their families who want to understand more about RA, and its treatments. SMILE-RA has a modular approach to learning, so each module is on a particular theme or subject and takes between 20 mins and half an hour to complete.
There is an intuitive interface that makes it easy to use and navigate your way around. After registering and completing the Foundation module which includes baseline evaluation questions, you can then direct your own learning experience and choose whichever modules are of interest to explore next.…
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By Anna Wilson – EULAR Edgar Stene Prize essay competition, runner-up in the UK national competition
After almost nine years of increasing intensity, the pain throughout my body was becoming unbearable. I vividly remember arriving at my doctor’s appointment that day to receive my blood test results, my fingers tightly clutching a list of symptoms.
“I know it sounds like I’m a hypochondriac,” I began awkwardly, “but I get inflamed eyes, rib cage pain, lower back spasms and stabbing in my hips that is so bad I struggle to walk in the morning.…
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A group of JIA charities (CCAA, Juvenile Arthritis Research, JIA@NRAS, SNAC and Versus Arthritis), working collaboratively with the British Society for Rheumatology, is investigating access to mental health provision and support within paediatric rheumatology.
In February 2022 CCAA sent out a survey to families which ran for three weeks and received just over 300 responses. The plan is to use the information gathered to help campaign for better services for children, young people and their families. CCAA is incredibly grateful to all those families who took time to respond and to share their experiences.…
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Blood Matters is the new National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society (NRAS) guide to the blood tests used in managing rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and adult juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA).
Blood tests are an important part of both the diagnosis and monitoring of RA and JIA, but the different tests, abbreviations and numbers can be confusing, and it might not always be clear to you what the purpose of each test is, why it’s important and what the results mean.
NRAS has created this resource because they strongly believe that having a good understanding of your blood tests is important to help you to manage your condition and improve outcomes.…
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Guest blog by Chantal Lyons. This essay was the national selection entry winner for the UK for the Edgar Stene Prize 2022
Everything changed in the year I turned twenty-three. In the spring, I began to run, dragging my unfit body off the sofa and into the local park. In the summer, I began to dream of running the London Marathon like my father had. And in the autumn, I could no longer ignore the white-hot pain growing in my hips and back.…
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The Group for Research and Assessment of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis (GRAPPA) is delighted to launch Informatree, a brand new, free website resource aimed at helping people with psoriatic arthritis to live well.
People living with psoriatic arthritis worked together with healthcare professionals who treat people with the condition, psychologists and researchers to develop the new resource. The contents were agreed upon by people living with psoriatic arthritis and clinicians.
The project was led by the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, and informed by people living with psoriatic arthritis worldwide.…
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