On 14th and 15th October 2019, the Society for Research in Rehabilitation (SRR) and the British Society of Rehabilitation Medicine (BSRM) held their joint scientific meeting at the University of Warwick.
This was a very well attended meeting with representation from multiple disciplines within the rehabilitation community. The meeting was a huge success with excellent feedback from the delegates. There were a number of special mentions to demonstrate the popularity of the fast forward poster sessions. Over 90% of delegates who provided feedback found the meeting very effective or effective for their professional development. This is a great accomplishment and indicated that the target of aiming the content for the audience of mixed rehabilitation professionals/ researchers, was achieved.
The content across the sessions on both days largely related to two themes: complex rehabilitation problems including sleep, spasticity and ethics, and the elderly and rehabilitation, covering the topics of towards independent living, amputee rehabilitation, hip replacement and neurological injury.
Further sessions included cardiac rehabilitation and goal setting in rehabilitation in addition to a number of free paper sessions with excellent individual research papers delivered by the presenters.
Dr Charlie Whiffen, an intensive care nurse from the University of Derby, spoke about her work visiting patients and their families after their stay in an acute neurosurgical ward. She visited nine families at one, three and twelve months after their stay in hospital and developed a detailed narrative understanding of the turbulent times that families experience after such a traumatic experience.
Dr Sheeba Rosewilliam, a physiotherapy lecturer from Birmingham, gave an erudite presentation challenging the current use of goal setting in rehabilitation, proposing alternatives from behaviour change techniques, motivational interventions and shared decision-making approaches.
There was an engaging presentation by Emeritus Professor Derick Wade for the Bipin Bhakta memorial lecture, entitled ‘Rehabilitation will only survive in the UK if politicians, the public, and other healthcare professionals know what it is. How should we fight for its survival?’
The conference concluded with a lecture by the local host Prof Di Playford who encouraged the community to explore opportunities for more playfulness in the rehabilitation setting.
An additional key element to the success of the meeting was the inclusion of a pre-conference training day for medical students – an important move to promote the advancement of rehabilitation.
The SRR and BSRM are already well underway in the organisation of the 2020 joint scientific meeting. Watch the websites and twitter feeds for announcements on venue and dates for this great meeting.
Twitter:
SRR – @rehabresearchuk
BSRM – @BSRehabMed
