A new audience for Myelopathy.org

Awareness of myelopathy among non-specialist doctors is not as good as it should be. This fact is at least partly to blame for many patients being misdiagnosed, diagnosed too late or not diagnosed at all. This must change.

At the beginning of September 2018, we launched a Myelopathy.org Student Society. The aim of this new part of Myelopathy.org is to target current medical students, who are the doctors of tomorrow.

Professor Hutchinson with myelopathy students
Professor Hutchinson answering students’ questions after his talk

 Our society aims to improve myelopathy education in UK medical schools, to raise awareness of myelopathy and to get students and doctors interested in and enthusiastic about myelopathy!

So far we have hosted several academic talks in the School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge. Highlights from our first term include an inspiring talk on neurosurgical careers from Peter Hutchinson, Professor of Neurosurgery in Cambridge and a fascinating talk from Consultant Neurologist Dr Sybil Stacpoole on spinal disorders for medical students, which included a wealth of interesting real cases, including myelopathy. Our talks have been very popular with attendance averaging over 50 students and junior doctors per talk!

We have established two annual Myelopathy.org student awards: an essay award and a research award. These are open to all UK medical students. We are excited about the interest and enthusiasm these awards will stimulate in myelopathy.

We have been successful in securing generous sponsorship from several corporate sponsors. Doctors Academy have provided us with refreshments for our events and prizes for our national awards; JP Medical and Pastest provided us with prizes for our national awards; generous funding donations have been made by Wesleyan and the Medical Defence Union. We are incredibly grateful for the generosity of all our sponsors and so excited by the interest in Myelopathy from these significant medical companies!

Dr Stacpoole teaching myelopathy
Dr Stacpoole’s teaching on myelopathy was met with great enthusiasm.

Finally, we are leading a national myelopathy research study and are delighted that to have recently received ethical approval and insurance to commence in the next few weeks. More information to follow later this year!

Please look out for our upcoming updates on our section of Myelopathy.org, like and follow us on our Facebook Page and keep up to date with our upcoming activities. You don’t have to be a medical student to join in!

Prizes for students by myelopathy.org
Some of the prizes for the Myelopathy.org national medical student awards