It’s finally spring (ish) so we thought we would share an update on our current projects and latest activities. The majority of work for Physios for ME is done voluntarily in our spare time, and while a lot has been happening for us all outside of Physios for ME, both personally and professionally, we remain determined and committed to improve the care of people with ME.
Our book… in German!
First, some exciting news to share. The translation rights for our book, “A Physiotherapist’s Guide to Understanding and Managing ME/CFS”, were sold to a German publisher at the end of 2023. We have had no involvement in the process but have been informed that the German version of our book is now due for publication by Hogrefe in June 2025. We’re so excited that our work can be accessed by even more healthcare professionals. You can preorder the book direct from the publishers here.
Regarding translation, our publisher can typically only licence translation rights to another publisher or organisation, not individuals. Any interested party can approach us with regards translation and we can then pass this on to our publisher.
Research
We have a lot of original research projects in various stages at the moment and continue in our aim to share them at conferences.
Two projects are currently live:
Our newest survey is now live and will be open until April. Please share this widely and internationally.
Recruitment is now closed for this and data collection underway.
We're also busy writing up some of our completed projects, which we will then submit for publication:
You can see more details of these projects and the rest of our work on our website.
Meeting with the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy
Last year, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) appointed a new chief executive, John Cowman. We met with John in November 2024 to introduce our work and the issues that persist, in terms of limited training and education for physiotherapists and the potential for our profession to cause harm to people with ME through poor management and lack of awareness of how we might cause post exertional malaise.
John really listened and understood our concerns, and linked us with Ashley James, Director of Practice and Development at the CSP, who we then met with in February. While the CSP cannot mandate the content of physiotherapy training, we hope to work together to expand our reach and continue to raise awareness. We look forward to working with Ashley this year.
Department for Health & Social Care Delivery Plan
We remain involved in the meetings with the Department for Health & Social Care, although despite our efforts we have failed to be involved in the production of any training materials. Our concerns remain around training, as outlined in our response to the interim plan. General training modules may be beneficial to raise awareness, but module content needs to apply to a broader range of health professionals, and we feel professional-specific competency-based modules should also be produced.
We were also disappointed to hear that no funding has been allocated to the plan, and have joined the campaign led by There for ME to demand the government #FundThePlan
Teaching Physiotherapy Undergraduates
This academic year we have delivered presentations on ME and Long Covid to undergraduate physiotherapy students at the University of Liverpool and Northumbria. It is great to be able to highlight the key issues to cohorts of future physiotherapists.
As always we thank the ME community for their support, especially their involvement with our research. We will continue to share updates from our current work and hope to have some new exciting projects up and running soon.