Hi All
Well I am back safe and sound from the 21st National Back Exchange Conference in Hinckley last week. If I were to give the whole conference marks out of ten I think I would give it between a 6 and a 7.
As always, the networking was good – meeting up with old colleagues (“old “as in “known for a long time”!). Also made a few new contacts, most notably Jacky Greenham, NHS Back Care Advisor for the whole of the Isle of White! Great fun!!
Now to the conference content itself. As at most conferences there were some highs and some not so highs.
The conference opened with a brief presentation from Chris Shaw, Chief Executive of DLF. It is now 40 years old. She was giving information about new services offered. These are:
- Ask Sara – for the general public to get information about medical conditions/product advice
- Living Made Easy – practical advice around equipment including equipment for children
- The web sites for these are:
The next session was brilliant!!
Lesley Jenkins, Behavioural and Personal Development Trainer. She was quite simply brilliant. Just to let you know how good she is, she has been the “warm up act” for President Clinton amongst other things. She works with small and large organisations helping them to get the best out of their staff by getting them to understand their own behaviour and how to get us to see other people’s “dolphins”. I’ll explain. She showed us a slide with a picture of a bottle with an engraving on it and she asked us what we saw. We all saw a man and a woman making love. She explained that when the same picture is shown to three year olds (it used to be 8 and then 5 year olds – just shows you how things have changed) and they all saw dolphins. When we all looked again we could see the dolphins. This was by way of explaining that sometimes we don’t always “see the dolphins” in other people and it is these “dolphins” that help us adjust our behaviour to get the best out of people/communicate more effectively etc.
She also talked about personality types. She talked about four main personality types:
So what colour are you? You can imagine that the rest of the conference people were going around saying “well she’s a blue”, or “he’s a red”!
Lesley pointed out that we have aspects of all these personality types within us but that one personality type in the strongest. In case you hadn’t already guessed I am a yellow!! We were sitting on the front row at this point and she said something and I answered automatically (don’t always engage brain before speaking!) and she said “There’s a yellow for a start!” She did some hilarious role plays with the different personality types. Very good, very amusing and a very good start to the conference!! OK, she wasn’t telling us anything really ground breaking but it was fun and well presented.
Hannah Smith (Senior Occupational Therapist in Somerset)and Sheenagh Orcahrd (doesn’t say what her professional background is but she has worked in all areas of health care providing training and risk assessment)
Their plenary session was on Double Handling within Domiciliary Care. The presentation was an overview of the business case for investigating the potential for delivering significant savings to the Authority by substituting Aids to Mobility and possibly a single carer in place of two carers to assist service users in their home. The main premise seems to have been trying to persuade Somerset Authority of the cost savings of providing ceiling track systems in some cases instead of using a mobile hoist to reduce long term care costs. Hardly ground breaking for good risk assessors but a point worth making since most authorities will not pay for ceiling track systems if they have mobile hoists, unless you can make a case for space or weight limitations. I know for a fact that Stockport Social Services only put one carer in (part of their policy – or was) whatever the equipment is. If there is anyone from Stockport reading this then we would be interested to know if that is still the case.
Next up was Professor S Khan – Getting Work to Work For You – Staying in or Finding a Job with Back Problems. Professor Khan is a GP and a Professor in Occupational Health at the University of Nottingham. He talked about ways to stay in employment or increase the chances of long term employment for people with back problems. Again nothing particularly ground breaking. He mentioned all the things that we talk about when we do our training regarding staying active, looking at your work stations, frequent rest periods etc. More info on memory stick including up to date statistics!!!
Hanneke JJ Knibbe (Physiotherapist) did a presentation on Monitoring Progress and Improving Quality of your Preventative Policy with the Care Thermometer: International Validation and Use
Lots of completely incomprehensible graphs and ..yawn ..yawn..not really relevant for me. I shouldn’t have gone to it really. I can see that some people might have found it useful .. even interesting…
I did not attend the Annual General Meeting but I understand that the most important thing to come out of it is that the National Back Exchange is not going for HPC registration. I think the main reason is that there are a lot of members who have not got a professional qualification but who work in industry as Manual Handling Advisors who would not be eligible to register. That is my understanding anyway. Someone may be able to clarify that point.
Exhibition Workshops
I went to a number of work shops but the most notable were in order of interest and value:
Natural Patterns of Movement – Haken Skenhede talked about sitting to standing – the natural pattern and the compensatory pattern. Very well demonstrated using a felt pen and flip chart.
The Black Report – what is out Future? Jane Fenn and Ann Drinkwater. The Black report is all about changing the culture from “sick” to “fit” for work. We will now be having “fit notes” and not sick notes in the future. You will probably be able to read the report on the internet. The presentation is also on the memory stick. The question asked was what can the National Back Exchange offer as an organisation to help in this area. It was generally agreed that there are skills amongst Back Care Advisors that could help and be involved in Fit for Work programmes/offer advice etc. Key members to take this forward.
Exploring the Legal Minefield – Pat Alexander. Useful exercise. We were put in groups and given a scenario of a nurse claiming for a back injury. We had to look at the evidence and come up with three points either for or against the case. This was a real case and it was interesting to see all the inconsistencies! Apparently it never got to court.
Manual Handling and Stress: Why we are losing the battle – Larry Guscoth talked about needing to concentrate more on the role of stress and how if affects function on all levels and perhaps introducing relaxation techniques into the training programme – time to do this would be good!!!
That’s all folks!!!
By “Yellow Helen” – Helen Sheard, Occupational Therapist
Well I am back safe and sound from the 21st National Back Exchange Conference in Hinckley last week. If I were to give the whole conference marks out of ten I think I would give it between a 6 and a 7.
The conference opened with a brief presentation from Chris Shaw, Chief Executive of DLF. It is now 40 years old. She was giving information about new services offered. These are:
She also talked about personality types. She talked about four main personality types:
Lots of completely incomprehensible graphs and ..yawn ..yawn..not really relevant for me. I shouldn’t have gone to it really. I can see that some people might have found it useful .. even interesting…
I went to a number of work shops but the most notable were in order of interest and value:
That’s all folks!!!
By “Yellow Helen” – Helen Sheard, Occupational Therapist