We must do more to ensure no-one misses out on rehab

Professor Karen Middleton is Chief Executive of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy. Karen is a Fellow of the Society of Orthopaedic Medicine, and, in that capacity, has taught physiotherapists and GPs on a national and international basis. Here she discusses the report Recovering after a hip fracture:
helping people understand physiotherapy in the NHS.

It’s the overwhelming feelings of regret and loss that get me. Every time. Whenever I hear a family member say they ‘can only wonder what might have been’ or a patient talking about what they can no longer do.

Whenever I see our Rehab Matters film I know that the fictional story it depicts is playing out in real life, behind closed doors, in homes across the country. It cuts deeply, as a physiotherapist, to hear these stories of how a lack of access to rehabilitation has changed a life.

It makes me burn at the injustice of so many people missing out. Because I know how access to high-quality rehabilitation can change a life for the better – how it can return a person to the things they love, and to the things they do with the people they love. How it can restore independence and a sense of self-worth. How it can restore a life; how it can save a life. 

Learning about clinical leadership: Our experience as Chief Registrars

Emily Bowen, Judy Martin and Marissa Minns are registrars in Geriatric Medicine. They were also in the first cohort of the Royal College of Physicians Chief Registrar programme.

“‘I don’t know where to start” a colleague confessed. “I’ve only been a consultant for 6 months, and now they want me to set up a new service…”’

It turns out that being a consultant is as much about leadership and management as it about the clinical work: leading a service or setting up a new one, writing a business case, managing colleagues and much more besides. Yet for the majority of us, the closest we come to leadership training as a registrar is a few days spent on a course.

Seen the doctor on the Tele? Patient centred care needs to arrive for all, and none more urgent than for our older patients

Chris Subbe is a Consultant in Acute, Respiratory & Critical Care Medicine. He is a Service Improvement Fellow with the Health Foundation. He does research on patient safety at Bangor University. He tweets @csubbe

Unsurprisingly many of us have more medical needs as we get older. While some people manage to stay remarkably fit, for others it is getting more difficult to get around town or worse across country. The hike around an overflowing car park of an inner-city hospital does surprisingly little for mobility, and most people get little value from sitting in an outpatient waiting area to wait while their medical team is struggling with the application of queuing theory to healthcare.

A few years ago, when granddad was sent a follow-up appointment for his cardiac surgery several months after the operation, I was suspicious. I rang the secretary of the colleague who had done an amazing job on his heart to ask for the reason for the review. “An important part of quality assurance: we like to make sure that everything has gone well”. I explained that granddad had been in hospital, survived prolonged rehabilitation, and had already been followed up by an excellent local geriatrician and one of our brilliant cardiologists. He felt well. I suggested cancelling the appointment.

Underfunded. Underdoctored. Overstretched.

Dr Zoe Wyrko is a Consultant physician at University Hospital Birmingham and is the Director of Workforce for the BGS. In this blog she discusses the recent RCP report ‘Underfunded. Underdoctored. Overstretched. The NHS in 2016‘. She tweets @geri_baby

The Royal College of Physicians have published a report Underfunded. Underdoctored. Overstretched. The NHS in 2016. It clearly lays out that honest debate is needed, and choices are going to have to be made – increases in funding or cuts in care. It states that a new plan is needed, not yet another  quick fix or temporary solution, rather one that is designed to meet the UK’s health and care needs in the long term, and that values, supports and motivates NHS staff.

Your speciality needs you…..to write questions for the MRCP(UK)

Adam Gordon is a Consultant and Honorary Associate Professor in Medicine of Older People based in Nottingham, UK.  He is also the editor of this blog.

Good CPD can be hard to come by.  Sure, there are endless opportunities to attend symposia and conferences and workshops and away-days……but how often do you engage in a piece of CPD that makes you reflect critically on your understanding of key aspects of your work as a geriatrician, or that makes you question the essence of what it is that separates your specialty from the others, or what makes geriatrics relevant to patient care?

If you’re looking for something more than powerpoint presentations in glamourous venues with finger-food of varying quality, something that encourages you to think deeply and reflect on what it is that is most important about being a geriatrician, then I may have just the thing for you.