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Allied Health students to receive £5,000 a year
Update for manual handling at work
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HSE has updated its INDG143 Manual Handling at Work guide for employers. The document explains the problem with manual handling and includes simple risk filters for lifting and lowering, pushing and pulling and carrying operations to distinguish between low and highrisk tasks. The guide also provides practical advice on making a risk assessment and suggests ways of controlling the risks. www.hse.gov.uk
Knowledge hub Public Health England’s Musculoskeletal Health programme aims to help maintain and improve the musculoskeletal health of the population in England, supporting people to live with good lifelong MSK health and freedom from pain and disability, which includes strategies for prevention. It has established a Knowledge Hub (KHub) for those interested in musculoskeletal health. Professionals are welcome to join the group to share knowledge and keep up to date with the latest news, events and resources. https://khub.net/sign-up
Walking and cycling to work linked with fewer heart attacks
AN active commute to work is linked to a lower rate of heart attacks, according to a new study part-funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF).
In areas in England where walking or cycling to work were more common in 2011, the rates of heart attacks were lower for both men and women across the following two years.
Researchers at the University of Leeds noted that this difference in heart attack rates could be partly explained by differences in risk factors for heart disease such as lack of exercise, having obesity, smoking and diabetes. However, for two groups – women who walked to work and men who cycled to work – the protective link remained when the researchers adjusted for these risk factors.
“Finding time to exercise can be tricky given our increasingly busy and often sedentary lives. But exercising doesn’t have to involve a pricey gym membership or hours spent on a treadmill,” said BHF associate medical director Professor Metin Avkiran. “Upgrading your commute by swapping the gas pedal for a bike pedal is a great way to get your heart pumping on a daily basis. If that’s not an option, parking a few streets away or getting off the bus a few stops early can help pave the way to a longer, healthier life,” he added. The number of people getting to work walking or cycling varied greatly across the UK, with as few as 5% of people walking or cycling to work in some local authorities, compared to as many as 41.6% in other areas. www.bhf.org.uk
MANY of those training for the allied health professions are among the nursing students on courses from September 2020 who will receive a payment of at least £5,000 a year which they will not need to pay back. The government funding will be given to all new and continuing degree-level nursing, midwifery and many allied health students from September 2020. It is expected to benefit more than 35,000 students every year.
Students will receive at least £5,000 a year, with up to £3,000 further funding available for eligible students, including for: l specialist disciplines that struggle to recruit, including mental health l an additional childcare allowance, on top of the £1,000 already on offer l areas of the country which have seen a decrease in people accepted on some nursing, midwifery and allied health courses over the past year. The funding will not have to be repaid by recipients. Students will also be able to continue to access funding for tuition and maintenance loans from the Student Loans Company.
The measures will be part of the upcoming NHS People Plan, which will set out work to reduce vacancies across the NHS and secure the staff needed for the future.
With physio students in England set to benefit from new funding, Kate Middleton, chief executive officer of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, said: “NHS physio vacancy rates in England are around 8% and demand is rising. Expanding the numbers in training is therefore vital to patient care. Better funding is great news, but we have to have a guarantee that it will not be funded by cutting physio training numbers.” www.csp.org.uk New funding is on the way for physio students in England
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Exercising doesn’t have to involve a pricey gym membership
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Physiotherapy can help tackle long-term sickness absence Physiotherapy-led graded activity should be considered as an intervention
ORGANISATIONS should be making the health and wellbeing of their staff a core priority and using interventions like physiotherapy to help people return to work. New guidance on workplace health published by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) says physiotherapy can help tackle long-term sickness absence.
It emphasises that all employers should have measures in place to ensure a “smooth and sustainable” return to work for people who are returning after a long period of absence. And for those who have been absent with musculoskeletal conditions, it advises that a programme of physiotherapyled graded activity should be considered as a suitable intervention.
The aim of the NICE guidance is to help people return to work after long-term sickness absence, reduce recurring sickness absence, and help prevent people moving from short-term to long-term sickness absence.
Helen Harte, professional adviser for the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, welcomed the guidance. She said: “We recognise how important it is to support people to safely transition back into work after illness or injury, and physiotherapy has a key role to play.
“Physiotherapists are expertly placed to offer advice and support for employees and employers on work health.” www.nice.org.uk
AS MANY as 57% of older adults said their back pain had not improved in the five years after initially presenting to their general practitioner, a new international study shows. The survey, which took place in the Netherlands and was published in the Journal of American Board of Family Medicine, included 675 patients aged 55 and older. At the five-year follow-up, 392 responded. The survey showed that most patients stopped seeking the advice of their medical professional during that five-year span. “While it is known that spine pain can be difficult to treat, it is surprising that more than half of patients had pain five years later,” said Ron Riesenburger, director of the USbased Spine Center at Tufts Medical Center. Obidiugwu Duru, professor of medicine at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, suggested that some patients may simply give up and accept their pain, rather than seek alternative treatment.
“Back pain is a lot like knee arthritis in that it is always lurking in the background,” he said. “As our patients get older, they are more likely to have other degenerative conditions that take longer to heal and aggravate these conditions. Our patients may even throw their hands up and say it is not worth trying any other treatments.”
According to Professor Duru, clinicians need to encourage more healthy living among their patients: “that way patients don’t have to live in constant pain”. Quality of life The findings showed that at the five-year follow-up, 43% reported themselves as (almost) completely recovered. The average clinical outcomes over the five-year course show that main improvements in pain, disability, and physical quality of life occur in the first three months of follow-up. After these three months, the average levels of pain and disability remain practically constant over time. In other words, most patients experience persistent or recurrent back pain. Medical consumption, mainly pain medication, remains substantial, with approximately one-third of the cohort (range 25% to 39%) using at least one type of medicine for their back pain.
However, over time, patients report less contact with healthcare professionals. This implies most patients do not consult their GP or other medical healthcare professionals after the first year, despite having persistent (or recurrent) back pain. They are “out of sight”, but their problem may not be solved. Either they have accepted their disability and pain level and learned strategies on how to cope with their back pain, or patients refrain from a visit because they assume it will not help them further in alleviating the pain. It remains unknown whether patients seek help from other healthcare workers or find alternative ways to relieve their pain. www.jabfm.org
SCIENTISTS have developed a new theory on the underlying cause of motor neurone disease, which could lead to more accurate diagnosis for patients and new treatments. A team at the University of Exeter has found evidence that the condition is caused by an imbalance in cholesterol and other fat levels in the compartments of the body’s cells, triggered by a number of different gene mutations. There are many different forms of motor neurone disease, which together affect around one in 2,500 people in the UK. Due to their complex nature, motor neurone conditions may be difficult to diagnose and currently no treatments are available to stop progression. The degenerative condition can vary hugely in terms of specific symptoms, age of onset and rate of progression, even between members of the same family. If confirmed, the new theory could lead scientists to use blood samples to predict the course and severity of motor neurone disease in an individual, and to monitor the effect of potential new drugs to treat these disorders. Spinal cord The finding particularly relates to the large group of motor neurone conditions called the “spastic paraplegias”, due to malfunction in how motor neurons in the upper part of the spinal cord communicate with muscle fibres. This leads to symptoms including muscle stiffness, weakness and wasting.
Professor Andrew Crosby of the University of Exeter Medical School is lead author of the paper 1 outlining the theory, published in Brain: a Journal of Neurology. He said: “For years, we have known that a large
Learning strategies on how to cope with your back pain
number of genes are involved in motor neurone disease, but so far it hasn’t been clear if there’s a common underlying pathway that connects them. Our group’s previous research has identified 13 genes which, if altered, may cause the condition, and some of these discoveries have proven crucial as the genes we identified are directly involved in the cholesterol processing pathway. That led to a eureka moment, that cholesterol and other fat processing pathways in cells are, in fact, the common link.”
The medical school’s Dr Emma Baple said: “Currently, there are no treatments available that can reverse or prevent progression of this group of disorders. Patients who are at high risk of motor neurone disease really want to know how their disease might progress and the age at which symptoms may develop, but that’s very difficult to predict. This paper should guide further research in this area, and we’re confident it could lead to more effective diagnostic tools and treatment strategies for a group of diseases that have a huge impact on people’s lives.”
The research is supported by a range of partners including the Medical Research Council. https://medicine.exeter.ac.uk
1) Lipid metabolic pathways converge in motor neuron degenerative diseases Image: pressfoto/Freepik
