Brighterway recently provided funding for 3 members of the Specialist Palliative Care Team to attend a virtual study day.
Metastatic Spinal Cord Compression (MSCC) is a complication for palliative patients with cancer diagnoses and considered an oncological emergency. Recognising the signs and symptoms of MSCC along with how to manage it is crucial in ensuring patients have the best possible outcome and optimal quality of life for the remainder of their life.
Kerry Newman, Specialist Physiotherapist in Palliative care, attended the training ‘The course itself was incredibly useful for us in the Specialist Palliative Care Team as it provided both up to date knowledge about MSCC but also about how other teams communicate across services.
Following the course, we’ve provided a training update to the rest of our team with a second planned in January. We’ve also reached out to QA Hospital in Portsmouth to create a better link between Trusts, as many of our patients with this condition are referred there.
The course has given us a better insight into what should be included in the patient information leaflets and have ordered some that are more suitable based on what we learnt from the training day. Along with learning resources for our own team that were provided from the course.
Overall, this day has provided us with an update of MSCC, a review of the current guidelines available for assessment purposes, a method for us to improve our assessment skills and enabled us to establish better links with other trusts locally.
Thank you to Brighterway for funding this opportunity to support the development of our team.’