Year published: 2014
PPA Committee Officer Reports 2013/ 2014
Prepared for the AGM held October 2013, ICC, Birmingham
Chairman’s report
Well another year completed and it is always a time to take stock and reflect on how this time has passed. As is customary, I would like to thank all involved for their contributions large or small, for without you there would be no meaningful PPA. I wish to extend a special vote of thanks to Linda Sparks for her work as Honorary Treasurer, Vice Chair and Interim Chair of PPA (North) during her time on the Executive and to wish her well for the future.
Unfortunately some departures are more final and I hope we have struck an appropriate tone with the manner in which we have publically dealt with the passing of Louis Gifford. Cormac`s 20th Anniversary Edition of the Journal was an outstanding copy but very different from the one that had been originally planned. I do not believe I can do justice to Louis` work or influence within and external to the PPA but believe that his book, recently completed by Philipa will be both a wonderful tribute and an essential text for any thoughtful, intelligent and enquiring individual whether they are a Physio or not…
Over the last twelve months, PPA work has been dominated by the development, refinement and completion of the Competency Framework Document. May I thank all members home and abroad for their valuable comments and may I praise the Working Group, led by Sarah Wilson for their unstinting efforts amongst all their usual paid work. We all hope this significant paper will be a springboard to watershed developments for the profession.
Whilst such work has taken precedence, it has not overshadowed progress in other areas, including iCSP site moderation, webpage development and the perennially popular Happy Friday Links, the PTE Courses run by Pete Gladwell & Emma Bartlett (nee Knaggs) and Physiopedia brought to fruition by Jo Etherton.
The PPA continues to work hard to foster more productive, engaging and mutually beneficial relations with the CSP, particularly through the team of Professional Advisors led by Steve Tolan. This process feels as though it is helping to cement the PPA at the forefront of the profession, within the UK and on an international scale.
Finally, this is the beginning of my last year as Chair. I am not standing for further re-election. May I extend my congratulations to Sarah Wilson nominated as Chair-elect, which will allow a gradual handover through the next 12 months to allow maximum effectiveness from Sarah`s 3 year term. I have no doubts that the PPA will be most ably led through whatever it faces in an uncertain period in healthcare.
Martin Hey
Chairman PPA
PPA (North) Chairman’s Report
The year since the last report has been one of consolidating the previous year’s activities whilst continuing the study evening meeting and networking format that has proven popular. In November we hosted an evening at Glasgow Caledonian University ‘Movement – the gap between words’ where Dance Movement Psychotherapists Caroline Galon and Barbara Erber gently introduced those attending to the idea of embodiment, becoming aware of bodily sensations in response to cognitions and expressing them in non verbal ways.
At the start of the year PPA North took part in a Scottish Government consultation on modelling of an intensive pain management programme in Scotland. Opinions of PPAN members were sought however there were no responses. As such the PPAN committee submitted the consensus opinion of the committee that services would be best met on a local level. The result of the wider consultation was to base a national service in 1 location, which following a bidding process is to be based in Glasgow. This will undoubtedly be to the benefit of those with chronic pain who previously travelled to residential programmes in England and Wales.
In the spring the Integrative Care Centre in Glasgow played host to a ‘Mindful Movement’ study afternoon led by Stephanie Wilson followed by the AGM. The afternoon was a resounding success with calls for expanding the afternoon – this is currently being explored by Maeve O’Neill. The event was popular drawing enquiries from across the UK and stimulating discussion on iCSP.
At the AGM – Lyndsey Ackermann, a Physiotherapist form the NHS Borders Pain Service was elected on to the committee as the newest member of the team. Most recently the PPA Introductory course to the Cognitive Behavioural Approach to the Management of Pain was held in Glasgow. There were 18 delegates with a wide range of background and experience leading to a successful event. Thanks to Pete Gladwell and Emma Bartlett and the organising committee.
Finally this year has seen the setting up of a PPAN Facebook and Twitter account as a way of communicating with the membership and broader pain community. We plan to develop this in the coming next 12 months. Plans for the coming year include a further study evening on fibromyalgia and a spring study afternoon to be arranged as a video conference to have a wider audience in the PPAN region. We also plan to participate in awareness raising and fund raising for 3rd sector organisations through 1 of the ‘fun’ out door challenges that are proving popular during the Scottish ‘summer’!
Neil Clark
PPA (North) Chair
Treasurer’s reports for PPA and PPA North
Summary Report for PPA Accounts 2013; audited accounts to follow.
2013 saw an increase in expenditure due to increasing costs of the journal printing, journal hosting, administration and development of the competencies framework. The audited accounts for PPA in 2013 will unfortunately show a deficit.
Positive news is that two courses were run by the partnership of PPA and PTE in 2013, and with interest growing more courses are run in 2014.
Summary Report for PPAN Accounts 2013; audited accounts to follow.
2013 saw PPAN accounts end in a deficit, expenses were due to a teleconference and a study evening. There was no income within the PPAN accounts during 2013.
Linda Sparks Treasurer PPA
PPA PRO Report for 2013-2014
The core activity of the PRO role this year has been keeping the membership informed of PPA events, and updated on information from CSP, NICE and other related organisations and of course the Happy Friday Links. The PPA website has evolved in to the main means of contacting members whereas iCSP is the main way of having discussions, lively debates and swapping information.
The CSP continue to supply support and guidance with what content is appropriate and what isn’t. Thanks to Jackson Dempsey and Chery Gurgul for being the main points of contact. The main queries this year have been mostly to do with research. The CSP position is that any research requests must have ethical approval before being posted as a news item. This is because it can be difficult to monitor whether ethical approval has been obtained. I would be keen to see if there is a way we can make this easier as I am sure that both from the researcher’s point of view they would like to access members and am equally sure that members would be willing to engage. There has also been increasing cooperation between members of the professional networks in promoting each other’s events as we recognise the shared interests of working together.
We continue to get the Google Analytics data from CSP which showed for the first time that iCSP Pain Management Network visits had exceeded those to the PPA website. This reflects the hard work put in by Reuben Crossley and Mary Byrne in moderating the iCSP site. Feedback from Reuben and Mary has been that they continue to enjoy moderating the iCSP website. They have wondered about broadening the moderator base and possibly recruiting a moderator form outside of their specialties of pain management and MSK. This is a positive step and one that recognises that pain crosses all specialties in Physiotherapy. They have also feedback that the most popular discussions can also be the most heated. There tends to be a polarising effect of certain topics that can lead to discourse is the opposite of constructive.
Of the new activity on the PPA website it is most notable that there are minutes of CSP meetings being posted in an effort to improve connection between CSP and PN’s.
A really positive event this year has been the development of the PPA Physiopaedia Pain Project led by Jo Etherton and supported by Rachel Lowe of Physiopaedia and the PPA. Jo has put in an enormous amount of effort to get this global project off the ground. She has had interest from around the world though not so much from the UK. I don’t doubt the expertise and experience of Physio’s in the UK but maybe we should be less reticent in coming forward?!
Another role of the PRO has been promoting the CBA courses with Pete Gladwell and Emma Bartlett. From the point of view of the PPA side most of the marketing has been done through the PPA website, iCSP, Twitter and the PN Noticeboard in Frontline. More recently we have paid for adverts in the courses section. We obviously rely on local advertising which is vitally important for successful courses. We tried to evaluate this recently on the Glasgow course and found that a mixture of local word of mouth and wider advertising was how most people heard of the course. So it is probably a mix of everything that leads to people signing up.
On the social media – on Twitter we have been using the account mostly to promote either the CBA courses or new website info and now have just under 400 followers. PPA North have also set up their own Twitter and Facebook pages to promote the work of PPAN.
Lastly the WCPT PTP work has been great to be involved in where we are now doing quarterly updates of the Happy Friday Links and events form around the world. We are trying to get contributors from around the globe to write a short summary of what is happening in their part of the world so would appeal if you have any international contacts to get in touch either through the PPA website or WCPT PTP Twitter or Facebook via Diane Jacobs.
I intend to stand for re-election for another 2 years as PPA PRO which has been a hugely rewarding and enriching experience. I would also be interested if any PPA member who is already on the committee would be interested in helping out a bit to get in touch.
Neil Clark PRO PPA
Education officer’s report
The two main areas of work within the PPA education strand have been the study days and the development of the framework to describe knowledge, skills and behaviour for physiotherapists working with patients with pain.
The study days has been driven by Pete Gladwell with support from his wife Kate. Together they have co-ordinated courses in Huddersfield, Bristol, London and Liverpool and a course is running in Nottingham and Glasgow in the next few months. Pete and Emma Bartlett have continued to deliver high quality training in cognitive behavioural approaches to pain management. Thanks must also go to the people who have provided support locally for study days and worked with the PPA to ensure the courses run smoothly. The feedback from the courses has been consistently positive and it is hoped that a further course looking at sleep disruption and pain will be rolled out in the New Year.
With the study days being so competently run time has been freed up to focus on the Framework document. This has been a huge challenge and a number of people have devoted a large amount of time to the project allowing us to take consultation to physiotherapists nationally and internationally and also to the British pain community with a workshop at the British Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting in April of 2014. Special thanks go to Gail Sowden, Heather Cameron, Martin Hey, Emma Bartlett and Zara Hansen for their support this year with this project and to Gwyn Owen from the CSP without whom this project would not have got off the ground and who has enthusiastically supported the development of the document.
The feedback from both the physiotherapy and worldwide pain community consultations has been both supportive of the project and helpful in ensuring the framework is a comprehensive and inclusive document and that it will be useful to physiotherapists in many roles, not just pain management specialties. The final document is to be launched at physiotherapy UK this year and in the New Year this work will continue with the development of a document describing competence and looking towards methods of measuring competence in areas of practice.
This has been my final year in the post of education officer. It has been an honour to work with so many people developing the education programme. I am looking forward to taking the competency development work forward and seeing the education strand develop under a new education officer.
Sarah Wilson. Education Officer PPA
Research Officer’s Report
I am hoping to follow on from the good work done by Melanie Berry in this role,
and am still formulating my ideas for the next 3 years as PPA Research Officer.
Firstly, I plan to use my 30 years of experience as a researcher in chronic pain measurement and management to further encourage more physiotherapists to take on serious research on pain.
One scheme I hope to promote is: “Interviews with completed physiotherapy postgraduates”, which had a first exposure in the 2014 Summer edition. The idea is to provide PPA members with basic information a basic set of 10 questions and answers), on completed research programmes on pain, which have been awarded an M.Sc or PHD. I feel it so important to expose such completed programmes to colleagues as soon as possible after completion, and in simple informative style, in order to (a) help bridge a gap between programme completion and research article publication, and (b) help inform other therapists who may be contemplating a research about the realities of undertaking a research programme of some magnitude. In that way, we may better prepare therapists for the journey ahead, prevent drop out or disillusion and help support people toward the end result.
Physiotherapists who have completed MSc or PhD programmes in the past 2 years are invited to contact me on v1proche@staffmail.ed.ac.uk
Another aim is to re-visit some areas of research which seem to be in the shadows of late, and to occasionally write a column or two about these. For example, quantitative research is not commonly reported in physiotherapy projects these days, yet there is a wealth of questions which could be investigated and a stock of highly suitable measures which are available for laboratory and clinical studies.
Meanwhile, I am still the new kid on the block and need to focus on learning the ropes re the PPA committee. I am delighted to be a part of this hard working and effective body and thank them for their guidance and support to date.
Dr Pat Roche. MCSP; M.Sc.Psych.; PhD Research Officer PPA
Clinical Management of Pain
College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine
The University of Edinburgh