by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
A few days ago the Chief Medical officer, Chris Whitty, published his report for 2023 entitled health in an ageing society. I’m sure many of you will immediately seek out the MSK related content, skimming straight to the section on early diagnosis of osteoporosis or the case studies on ESCAPE-pain and MSK hubs. However, those are not the bits I think are most important for us.
The big take away message for me is the section on multi-morbidity. As we age, we become more likely to develop multiple conditions and for many people one of those will be an MSK condition. This means that healthcare practitioners treating MSK conditions will increasingly see people with multiple other conditions. Deprivation and poverty will lead to this multimorbidity occurring at an earlier age.
The impact of these multiple conditions interacts, multiplying the difficulty of managing those conditions. There is an important message in the report about medical professionals maintaining generalist skills. I think this applies to everyone working in MSK health.
For too long MSK has been given a low priority, despite its importance as a driver of years lived with disability. We have had to fight our way to the table and constantly find we are not being given the attention that we deserve. However, there is a danger that in our constant effort to gain attention we become siloed in our thinking, focusing on MSK without an understanding of the broader context. Unless we focus on the needs of those who have MSK and other conditions we will be failing them.
So I urge you all to read the report. But please don’t look for the MSK related content. Read the section on multimorbidity and think about the implications for your patients.