Rehabilitation News

Jo Corrado and Juliet Reid interview another rehabilitation doctor about what excites him about his work. At present, it is the rehabilitation of patients with problems after Covid infection. He leads (with others) the Leeds service which is the home of the LOCOMOTION research project (see here). The podcast can be accessed (easily) here.

The British Society of Rehabilitation Medicine has opened (is that the right word) a FaceBook page. (here) Its handle (is that the right term?) is @RehabMedicineUK. It was set up by Dr Shigong Guo and Ms Marlene Worrell, who know more about FaceBook than I do. It would be difficult to know less than me. Please visit it. Please add comments to it and use it.

NICE is looking for people for a guideline committee on “Stroke and Transient Ischaemic Attacks in the over 16s”. Does not specifically ask for rehabilitation (but should!). If interested, apply y October 6th here. They are updating a 2019 guidance document. here.

The International Patellofemoral Research Network has developed a checklist of standards for reporting quantitative pain research. It is available here. It has been adopted by the Equator network as one of their many checklists for use in research. (here)

Cardiff University have just launched a freely accessible database of over 200 technological tools for use in rehabilitation. You can access the list publicly using the following: username = PublicUser password = User2021! (note added ! ). To gain access to more you need to register personally but it is still free. Click here.

The Medipex NHS Innovation Awards 2021, management of long-term conditions category was won jointly by the Leeds Long COVID community rehabilitation service, and by Dr Manoj Sivan and colleagues who also worked with the same community team.

For more details, visit this site.

Two doctors, Joanna Corrado and Juliet Reid, both from Leeds, discuss what they find exciting and interesting about Rehabilitation Medicine as a medical specialty. This is the first podcast in a series. Publicise it to medical students and Foundation Year doctors. The podcast is here.

If you are not from the UK, every doctor spends two years learning the basics after qualification, before starting to specialise, and specialisation includes in General Practice (family medicine).

A new Twitter account has started – Rehab Roundup, @rehabroundup1 – with the goal of persuading doctors in training that Rehabilitation Medicine is the best specialty. And, of course, I agree wholeheartedly. This website has pages that should interest doctors who know little about rehabilitation, for example here.

Today the Royal College of Physicians (London) published a position paper on health inequalities, available here. This is accompanied by a letter to the UK prime minister, Mr. Johnson, which has been signed by very many organisations including the British Society of Rehabilitation Medicine. A copy of the letter is here, and the College news page is here.

This topic is of great importance to anyone working in rehabilitation. (It should be of great importance to everyone, including all Members of Parliament.) Poverty and the other factors associated with health inequality all lead to increased disability, both more people with disability and greater severity of the disability.

Conversely, disability is associated with and often leads to poverty, more stress, and other consequences that lead to greater health inequality.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) have a draft guideline on “Disabled children and young people up to 25 with severe complex needs: integrated service delivery and organisation across health, social care and education.” It is out for consultation. It can be downloaded and read here. Consultation is open up to September 14th 2021.

If you are involved with paediatric rehabilitation, or with the transfer of patients from paediatric to adult rehabilitation services, you should read this and comment directly or through your professional organisation. Now.

The World Health Organisation has just published “Support for rehabilitation: self-management after COVID-19-related illness, 2nd ed.“. (see here) This has been written by the Leeds rehabilitation team.

This should be helpful to all patients with Long Covid, and all rehabilitation teams should download the document, (here) read it and use it.

The Society for Research in Rehabilitation has a new website. (here) Looks good. (top banner showing the menu needs a better background so that it is seen!) Visit it.

The Society for Research in Rehabilitation has published it August newsletter. Anyone who is not a member (yet) can read it here.

The Leeds Long-Covid rehabilitation service led br Dr Stephen Halpin is in the final list of six services being considered for the BMJ (British Medical Journal) Awards 2021, clinical leadership prize. Read more about the candidate services here. The rehabilitation entry is the fourth, starting on the first page. It is an example of close collaboration leading to service integration. Long-Covid rehabiliation is discussed in more detail here. (links to other pages too).

Members of the British Society of Rehabilitation Medicine should have received a newsletter today. But many others might be interested in what is happening, and members may have missed the email. So here is a link to the BSRM website page with the newsletter on it. (here)

The details on how to transition to the new curriculum are now on the Joint Royal Colleges Physicians Training Board (JRCPTB) website. The relevant pages are: a news item here; the transition webpage here; and the speciality webpage here, where you will now find, under heading of ‘curriculum’, the curriculum, Rough Guide, mapping from the 2010 to the 2021 curriculum, and the ARCP decision aid. The syllabus is under ‘Forms and Guidance’. Book to see your educational supervisor soon to arrange transfer

Anyone interested in the 2021 conference on “Rehab – living and ageing with long-term conditions” on 9th and 10th November 2021 can now (a) apply to see it (it is on-line only, so can be seen anywhere in the world) and (b) submit an abstract. The website is open: press this link (here). It covers complex orthopaedics, frailty, long-COVID rehabilitation. spasticity and contractures, and implementation.

The University of Plymouth rehabilitation department has just published a freely available resource covering tele-rehabilitation. It is available here. It contains a mixture of sound advice, quite realistic and not over-optimistic; links to other resources; and evidence. Beware – the home page takes you away from the site.

Just heard about a company developing a SmartPhone app to help people with neurological conditions, especially (I suspect) traumatic brain injury. It is called Alfred. Can be seen at this link. (here) [I have no commercial or other interest or link; they are interested in research.]

In my role as Chair of the Rehabilitation Medicine Specialist Advisory Committee, I have received an 80 page questionnaire on workforce planning from Health Education England, where I have to predict change in demand. At this stage this item is for information, but I might like help. Expect a blog and items on Twitter!

A new electronic electronic stimulation device developed at Sheffield University is to be subjected to a trial. The clinical lead is Dr Siva Nair, a Consultant Neurologist who also is an expert in rehabilitation and a member of the British Society of Rehabilitation Medicine. He contributed to the recently developed training syllabus. The goal is to reduce spasticity, possibly allowing more functional use to emerge.

A grant of £1.2M has been given by the National Institute for Health Research through its invention for innovation (i4i) funding stream. The title is “A new therapy for post-stroke arm spasticity: Sheffield Adaptive Patterned Electrical Stimulation (SHAPES) – a co-designed system improvement followed by a powered multi-arm randomised control trial.” Its acronym is SHAPES. Further details are given on the NIHR website here, and in a news item here.