After a period of failing to produce our monthly blog, June is our month to gradually introduce this back into your learning schedules. Please do bear with us as we get things back together for what will hopefully soon be a monthly blog released on the first Monday of each month…back to our usual routine for July.
Our aims at AStretch remain to share best practise and promote best care for people living with Axial SpA. Of course, we don’t do this alone, and this month we wanted to spotlight one of the organisations we work closely with, namely the British Society for Rheumatology (BSR). The BSR is the national society for rheumatology and has recently amalgamated its medical and health professional sections as well as its paediatric arms into one combined Society. This has been a great move for physiotherapy and for health professions as a whole as we get more closely associated with all members of the team that look after those living with rheumatological diagnoses. One of the aims of the BSR at the moment is to invest and develop its eLearning platform. This has led to a recent implementation of a Digital Learning Board which is meant to act in the same way as an editorial board would do for a more traditional paper journal based output. One of our members of the AStretch committee was fortunate enough to be recruited to this Digital Learning Board and therefore we at AStretch have a voice and strong representation at this level. Amongst other benefits, this has led to the allocation of the month of June for the BSR eLearning to be more focused on physiotherapists (and other allied health professionals) and to offer content around the management of those living with axial SpA. Not all physiotherapists working in rheumatology are members of the British Society of Rheumatology, and for that reason the membership team at the BSR did offer free access to all interested physiotherapists to the June eLearning content, more than 40 physiotherapists took up this offer (offer finished 5th July 2021)
Here is a screenshot of the menu of learning activities you’ll see on accessing the BSR eLearning content for this June month of focus on axial SpA and we do hope you’ll find it useful. It includes an eLearning case study written by Will Gregory. There’s an expert webinar on axial SpA delivered by Professor Karl Gaffney. We’ve got a new podcast recorded specifically for the eLearning where two members of the 2017 NICE SpA guidelines development group (Dr. Carol McCrum and Dr. Nicola Goodson) discuss how the guideline was written and its current application in 2021. We also have free access to a journal article on the Early Inflammatory Back Pain service that Becky Adshead runs at Barts, ten years of experience and an exemplar service. And finally, there is a webinar on investigation interpretation thinking about bloods and their role in diagnosing back pain as well as potential differential diagnosis including red flag issues.
This is a great development that the BSR are investing in eLearning and are clearly committed to physiotherapists and also to axial SpA. We are really keen that as many people as possible can access the June learning and hence this slight hijack of the AStretch blog to spread the word far and wide. We will be back to usual educational, informative and evidence-based blog content next month so please do lookout for the new blog dropping Tuesday 6th of July.
Will