On Wednesday I attended the MND care centre directors meeting. This is where all of the care centre directors, care centre co-ordinators, our regional care development advisers (RCDA’s) and some members of the care development team at the MND Association come together from across the country to share information and good practice.
Topics discussed included the National Strategy for MND care and research, for which the petition will be handed in at 10 Downing Street this coming Monday (21 June). The National Institute for Clinical Health and Excellence (NICE) appraisal of non-invasive ventilation was also discussed along with a presentation about the lithium trial that is currently underway in the UK. Some of the presentations were quite hard going and I found them difficult to follow as they were very technical.
A nice touch to the morning’s proceedings was the presentation made to Prof Nigel Leigh (who is retiring at the end of this month) by Brian on behalf of the MND Association. Nigel has been a key player in the world of MND care and research for many years and has recently passed on the baton of directing King’s College MND Care Centre to Prof Ammar Al-Chalabi.
After personally meeting one of the directors, I received an email the next day from him. He commented that it was nice to put a face to a name which was incidentally one of my main objectives of attending this meeting! It gave me a chance to put faces to names as some of the directors are also our grantees and members of our Biomedical Research Advisory Panel (BRAP) who I am in regular correspondence with.
All in all it was an enjoyable day and gave me an insight into some of the research that is going on within the Care Centre’s and how dedicated all the staff are to the care and treatment of people living with MND.
