Major ME/CFS training seminar for medics, nurses and medical students in Liverpool on June 1

by tonybritton on April 28, 2011:

Liverpool ME Support Group has been busy these past few months turning an old adage on its head about UK doctors not believing in ME – with 45 doctors, consultants and other healthcare professionals so far booked in for a training seminar at the 174-year-old Liverpool Medical Institution at Mount Pleasant.

The event will be held on Wednesday, June 1.

“We’ve got 129 seats in the room and at the moment I want to hold them open for medics, nurses and medical students”, said group chairman Mrs Dorothy O’Rourke. “So far we have 45 places taken after the initial invitation was sent out. We’ll be back on the trail after this bank holiday weekend; I’d like to see many more young doctors and trainee doctors there.”

Staff from the local NHS ME/CFS service together with other specialists in infectious and communicable diseases and paediatrics have already booked in to quiz seminar speakers Professor Malcolm Hooper, emeritus professor in medicinal chemistry at Sunderland (who will be chairing this year’s Invest in ME conference on May 20), Dr Irving Spurr (a Bishop Auckland GP with over 20 years experience of running ME clinics and involvement in ME research) and chairman of Chester and Wirral ME Self-Help Group Joan Crawford, who is working on an MA in clinical counselling.

“For years, patients with ME have been hearing stories about how there is no provision in the curriculum for medical education in this illness and that there no plans to change this”, said Mrs O’Rourke, both of whose adult children suffered from the illness when they were younger. “We very much hope that seminar will be a step in the right direction, and stimulate interest in the subject”.

The seminar has been set up with the help of a £4,500 grant from Liverpool Charity and Voluntary Services, which will also pay for additional work to be carried out at the city’s Neurosupport Centre – details of which will be announced later.

Admission will be free and the event will open at 6.30pm when there will be a hot buffet. The lectures will begin at 7.20pm and the evening is expected to finish by 9.30pm. Spaces in the university car park nearby are available on request when registering.

To register, please phone Dorothy O’Rourke on 0151 722 2471 or email liverpool_me2@yahoo.co.uk