The Faculty of Sport and Exercise Medicine UK has responded to this Public Health England consultation with a focus on MSK services in the NHS.
The Faculty’s response emphasises that specialist clinicians are needed who understand the cause of MSK problems and are able to provide focused treatments as well as lifestyle interventions to manage and prevent MSK disorders. If the NHS could create MSK medicine consultants to lead services together with physiotherapy practitioners and GPs with a special interest, it would do a great service to the millions of patients that suffer from MSK disorders.
NHS trusts should invest in those services, not to take away from orthopaedic surgeons or rheumatologist, but to allow both MSK physicians, surgeons and rheumatologist to see the patients they have been trained to help.