Resources for professionals for understanding living with long term conditions

In my talk Living With Pain on 7th February, I referred to several studies and other resources. Here are links to these and some additional ones on living with pain and hidden chronic illness, and improving our care.

me + my medicines charter launch

me + my medicines is a new communications charter which aims to improve the way we talk about medicines. The charter will be launched at a free event on Thursday 12th October in Leeds, and patients, carers and health professionals are invited to attend.

Standing up for our rights

Standing up for our rights can be difficult when we’re ill, so here are some resources on getting our healthcare, social care, benefits, housing, and employment needs met. Always remember that M.E. is classed as a disability by the Equality Act 2010 and we have rights.

More power to you: M.E. patients found to be the least empowered

How can we become more empowered, and what do health professionals need to know to enable this?

Making the most of PIP

Being awarded PIP at long last has opened up lots of other help such as travel cards, a blue badge and discounts for those who help me when I’m out and about.

Making decisions about our health

Research shows that if we make decisions about our health ourselves, there will be better outcomes for us. In this blog post I look at UK health policy on this and what to consider when making health decisions.

#pharmacy24 highlights – what do pharmacy teams actually do?

On 24th March I took part in #pharmacy24, a 24-hour Twitter pharmacy event. I’ve picked out some tweets from the whole event to show the variety of work that pharmacists and pharmacy teams do.

Guest blog about patient experiences on Pharmacy in Practice website

Johnathan Laird, 2015 regional winner for Scotland of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s I Love My Pharmacist competition, has kindly posted my comments about learning from patients and respecting them as empowered decision-makers about their health as a guest blog on the Pharmacy in Practice website.