A half day aiming to clarify dilemmas in clinical and non-clinical practice relating to Long COVID, a complex new condition, and place it in a societal context. - What are the best current clinical approaches to improve functional capacity? - How can we link with the NHS offer, better? - What are current gaps in research? - What critical actions are now required? Target audience – Clinicians, HR leads, Long COVID patients and policy leads £25 to attend. Free for Long COVID patients - contact admin@som.org.uk for joining link. 2.00pm Welcome Professor Ewan Macdonald OBE, University of Glasgow Chair: President of The Society of Occupational Medicine, Professor Anne Harriss 2.15pm The size of the problem - why is Long COVID important? Dr Nisreen Alwan, University of Southampton 2.30pm What is Long COVID? - Dr Clare Rayner - clinical perspectives from a multidisciplinary view - Lesley Macniven - Long COVID support - Dr David Strain - BMA - Dr David Putrino - Mt Sinai, Head of Rehab - A US perspective - 3.15pm Government, NHS offer Alex Norris MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Public Health Cathy Hassel, Director of Clinical Policy, Quality and Operations, Medical Directorate, NHS England and NHS Improvement Q&A 3.45pm Perspectives on return to work with Long COVID - 10 minutes - An Occupational Medicine perspective - Dr Tony Williams - Rehabilitation perspectives - Dr John Etherington - Physiotherapy perspectives - Colette Owen - VR perspectives on early intervention - Deborah Edwards 4.25pm What are the research gap and next steps? Panel discussion with Prof Ewan Macdonald, Prof Anne Harriss, Dame Clare Gerada, Dame Carol Black. 4.45pm Close £25 (you will be emailed a Zoom link to join) Download our COVID-19 return to work guide: For recovering workers here https://www.som.org.uk/civicrm/event/info?id=345&reset=1
Research gaps and next steps, a discussion featuring Clare Gerada, whose public opinion is already known: no research is necessary because she and her ideological colleagues know the answer already so the next steps in her thinking are to simply neglect and gaslight this patient population. You know, same as ever. Great example of the Peter principle, seeing those two still being treated as respectable medical professionals, despite the enormous harm they have done. Even involved on the very thing they choked out of any progress as if their past work was completely unrelated. The lack of accountability in medicine is absurd, people can fail upwards and be celebrated for their failure.
Well when chicken soup and exercise are all you need, what research is there to do? For blood clots and other medically "respectable" problems it's different, but for typical PVFS of course it's not necessary because "BPS".
This is in association with the Vocational Rehabilitation Association, which has long been promoting bad stuff on CFS with Jessica Bavinton, etc. They're connected to lots of insurance companies.
Without a recording proving this, maybe a patient describing what they heard will be considered 'abusive' (though it shouldn't be), but I searched for discussion of this summit and saw this: https://twitter.com/user/status/1376568612685807620 If only everything was recorded!
I'm glad to see that at least one MP, Alex Norris, has a presence. He's my MP, and I'm hoping to recruit his help with disseminating information locally (and if possible, get mentions in Parliament or committees) about DecodeME once formal recruitment is launched. I haven't yet met him; I knew his predecessor, who was our MP for donkey's years, quite well, and if Alex is even half as good he could be a useful ally. He was certainly very committed to health issues right from when he was elected, and has done some good work locally. With a bit of luck, he won't be 'turned' by the likes of Clare Gerada!
This is an aside, but I spotted this same account a week or so ago. Initially it came across as a potentially like-minded group of allies, but it quickly got a bit weird. I'm only posting it in case anyone decides to retweet their stuff without reading all of it; let's say that it's unclear whether their approach will turn out to be helpful in the pursuit of solid science, and leave it at that.
There are good MP advocates for constituents with MECFS (of all parties) around. If you are at all able to join up with any other PwME in your constituency, it certainly helps highlight the situation, gives you the chance to rest when needed and share the workload (#MEAction in your region would be the best place to search). Our local group has certainly had far more impact working together than when we didn’t know each other and individual opinions could get lost amongst all the other constituency work. Good luck!
