News - Archives

 

Content

Eular Edgar Stene Prize Essay Competition
ARMA's Standards of Care Launch
Standards of Care in Dept of Health report

EULAR Edgar Stene Prize Essay Competition

ARMA recently coordinated the essay competition for the UK entrant to the EULAR Stene Prize. The Stene Prize is a European-wide, bi-annual competition for a prize of 2000 Euros and a trip to the EULAR Annual Congress. The prize is awarded to a person with arthritis or another musculoskeletal condition for the winning essay based on their experiences. The theme of 2007 competition was ‘The Small Things in Life Matter'.

This year's UK competition was a very successful one, with 25 entries. All the essays were of a very high calibre, making the judges' task very difficult. This year's judges were Ailsa Bosworth of the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society, Kim Fligelstone of the Scleroderma Society, Kate Llewellyn of Arthritis Care, and Gillian Econopouly of ARMA. Many thanks to all the entrants and the judges for their participation.

Although all the entries were excellent, there can only be one winner.

This year's UK winner is Helen Saxon-Jones. Helen was born in Wrexham, North Wales in March 1977. She was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in 1987 at 10 years old and started her surgical career at the age of 14 with hip replacements. She has gone on to have a total of 13 operations. In 2004, she married Neil, an Officer in the RAF.  They have recently moved to Lincoln and bought their first house, which they share with their 2 dogs. Helen heard about the Edgar Stene prize through the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society, where she is a volunteer. She also works as a civil service Admin Assistant. Congratulations to Helen!

Helen's essay is available below, along with other UK entries.

EULAR has now announced that the overall winner of the European competition is Lena Anderson, the entrant from Denmark. The competition next runs in 2009.

Please note that these essays are printed by kind permission of the authors; copyright remains with the author and any request to reprint any essay in whole or in part should be sent to ARMA, whereupon it will be forwarded to the author concerned.

WINNER Helen Saxon Jones.pdf

Christine Descombes.pdf

Dorothy Borbas.pdf

Helen Arnold.pdf

Jill Holroyd.pdf

Julie McKechnie.pdf

Lorraine Pulford.pdf

Mandy Freeman.pdf

Miriam Quigley.pdf

Nila Patel.pdf

Penelope Parry.pdf

Penny Fisher.pdf

Peter Gaston.pdf

Robert Rees.pdf

Rosemary Cleaver.pdf

Shelley Giorgi.pdf

Kate Oakes.pdf

 

ARMA's Standards of Care Launch

It is exciting times at ARMA as we launch the ARMA Standards of Care for back pain, inflammatory arthritis and osteoarthritis.

The Standards of Care highlight the key mechanisms to ensure people with MSCs get the best healthcare they can, but also touch on some of the other social and environmental factors which affect people with MSCs, such as social care, the impact on the family and access to their local community.

The standards have been drawn up by a working group made up of clinical experts, representatives of user groups and people with MSCs, which first met in the summer of 2003. Six sets of standards are being produced, one for each of the main groups of musculoskeletal conditions.

The core aims of the standards of care are to:

  • Improve the quality of life for more than 8.5 million people with MSCs;
  • Identify the care and treatment people with MSCs can expect;
  • Enable the NHS to improve resource management by preventing avoidable disability, so reducing return GP and hospital appointments;
  • Promote consistent, evidence-based approaches to advice, prevention and treatment;
  • Improve productivity and reduce the benefits bill, where appropriate, by supporting people to remain economically active.

Hard copies of the documents are being distributed and are downloadable from this website in both colour and copy-friendly black and white.

[return to current news content]

Standards of Care referred to in key Dept of Health report (June 2005)

ARMA's Standards of Care are included as a resource in a recent key Department of Health Report, entitled Supporting People with Long Term Conditions.

[return to current news content]