The spinal cord injuries community is relatively small, yet the issues that patients - and those helping patients - with spinal cord injuries must navigate can often seem so extensive as to be overwhelming and beyond comprehension.
As specialist solicitors we encounter all sorts of professionals who are involved in helping the same person we are trying to help. Three facts about that dynamic always resonate, and remain constant:
Firstly, we are each helping the same person using our respective skills and talents.
Secondly, the extent of the help people with spinal cord injuries need is greater than the help available.
Thirdly, most agree that all offers of help is welcome.
I was lucky to be invited to a Study Day at the National Spinal Injuries Centre, Stoke Mandeville recently. We are passionate supporters of groups like MASCIP and used to that multi-disciplinary approach on one level. Being invited into what was essentially an in-house Study Day was a privilege. The notion that as solicitors we might have been proverbial fish out of water was quickly dispelled, and the three facts outlined above were top of mind throughout.
As a peripheral observer, I was struck by how important the work being undertaken by those presenting and speaking (and by those to whom they were speaking) is; and how important it is to share it; to learn from it, and to help implement it.
Hearing talks giving insight in to and perspective on where spinal injuries rehabilitation medicine sits; where innovative approaches to making things work even better in future is taking things; on the work being done to help patients (and staff) online and remotely via the Healthzone app that is really gaining traction; was genuinely uplifting.
To learn more about some amazing work being done to look at things like faecal microbiota transplantation (look it up!) in spinal cord injured patients with recurrent c-difficile infection; the role of probiotics in preventing diarrhoea associated with antibiotics; or the impact of vitamin D deficiency in spinal cord injured patients; or studies looking at dysphagia and how it is treated across different spinal units; was a real privilege.
Work on measuring spinal cord injured people’s energy requirements to then match those with diet and nutritional needs in hospital and on discharge home; and then the connection between nutrition and pressure ulcer treatment was fascinating, interesting, and inspiring.
One of the final talks of the day on the surgical management of pressure sore ulcers was especially striking. The dedication, passion and clever commitment of people who devote what is very often their life’s work to helping people with spinal cord injury is remarkable. But to hear professionals in different disciplines explaining how their work dovetails with colleagues’ work in different disciplines or otherwise compliments shared goals; to witness the power of communicating experience, expertise, perspective, and insight and to see people at the top of their game and each with the shared goal of helping spinal cord injured patients struck really struck a chord.
When there is so much gloom all around, it was genuinely uplifting to be in the company of so many capable and caring people.
At the end of the day it was even more clear that all those gathered are using their experience, expertise, talents and skills to help the same people whose lives change after spinal cord injury; those people need more help than there is to go around; and all help is welcome. That was, is, and always be important.