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The Clinical Skills Academy are delighted to offer a unique course introducing therapists to the One-Handed Therapy Intervention (OTI) Programme

Dates:     Monday 25 and Tuesday 26 November 2024

Time:       9:00am – 5:00pm

Venue:     Eldon Court, Newcastle upon Tyne

Please click on the link below to find out more……

Newcastle Hospital’s Frailty Clinical Specialist Physiotherapist, Charlotte Buckland, is celebrating recent publication in the Journal of Frailty, Sarcopenia and Falls, of the results from the first wave of the national Benchmarking Exercise Programme for Older People (BEPOP). Read the full paper here. The BEPOP project, a collaborative initiative by the British Geriatrics Society and AGILE (the professional network for physiotherapy staff working with older people) was hosted by the National Institute for Health Research Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre (NIHR Newcastle BRC).

This innovative project involved asking NHS physiotherapy services providing community-based exercise for older people, to share details of the exercise interventions they use with their patients. This work allowed practitioners to better understand which elements of their exercise programmes are associated with improved patient outcomes. This intelligence has led to a new set of recommendations for guiding service improvement.

Charlotte, a member of the BEPOP steering group, recently completed a NIHR Newcastle BRC funded research internship, focusing on sarcopenia (the loss of muscle mass and strength). Charlotte reported that ‘This project supports physiotherapy services to improve sarcopenia care with better assessment, diagnosis, and delivery of effective exercise, offering tangible benefits for patients and services.’

Jennie Bailey, Team Lead for the Belsay Day Unit Physiotherapy Service at Newcastle Hospitals, a participating site in the project, commented that ‘…contributing to the BEPOP project was a valuable learning experience; it has led us to reflect on our clinical practice and make local improvements with sarcopenia diagnosis and exercise progression.’

Further findings from the BEPOP project will be presented at this year’s Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) conference in October, see CSP annual conference | The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy.

The BEPOP team are encouraging anyone interested in joining the next wave of the project to email [email protected] or visit www.bepop.org.uk for further details.