About a year ago ARMA had a vision for a conference that would bring together stakeholders from across the MSK community to think about how we can work better together to improve the lives of people living with MSK conditions. Earlier this week that vision became a reality in the form of the Working Together conference.
The planning started back in January when I began to seek out people who were already doing this well. I had conversations with some amazing people doing incredible work to join up services across systems and to bring about excellent multi-disciplinary working. It was inspiring to hear about their work.
By March things were looking very different, and it was uncertain whether the conference would even be able to take place. Through the pandemic, amazing work has continued at a local and national level, across rheumatology, orthopaedics, community, primary and pain services. The need to collaborate has never been greater. Like everyone, we found creative ways to adapt our plans, and stretched Zoom to the limits of its capability to deliver an online version of our planned conference, complete with networking and an exhibition.
People who work in every part of the NHS, in private practice, voluntary sector and policy makers, as well as people with lived experience of long term MSK conditions came together to listen to different perspectives on the challenge of delivering excellence in MSK.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of MSK health. It is fundamental to our ability to move, to be independent, to work, to play, to keep the rest of our bodies healthy. Poor MSK health has a huge cost to individuals, the NHS, the economy and society. To drive this cost down we need excellence in MSK services, better support for people with MSK conditions and a focus on prevention. We all have something different to contribute to this and we can only deliver what’s needed when we collaborate.
We always conceived of the conference as the start of something, not an end in itself. It is clear from the chat, the networking and the twitter from the conference that the ideas and discussion from the day will make their way back into people’s workplaces and the vision of the conference will live on.
I would like to thank everyone who made the event such a fantastic day – the speakers, chairs, exhibitors, sponsors and delegates. I hope the spirit of #MSKTogether will find its way into many corners of the MSK world.