MS Foundation 15: Project winners announced!

The fifteenth MS MasterClass saw Foundation delegates submitting some brilliant intermodule projects with a huge proportion clearly steered by local patients' needs. From supported self-management to service user surveys, effectively providing a comprehensive review to improved medications access through community distribution, the slant away from disease-modifying therapies and towards a more holistic and supportive management was strongly evident.

There were four stand-out projects in this delegate group: two from pharmacists Niamh Gormley and Rebecca Harrison, one from specialist practitioner Sarah German, and one joint project from MS clinical nurse specialist Flordeliza Madriaga and neurology physician associate Nicole Japzon.

Our huge congratulations go to Flordeliza and Nicole for their winning project. Flordeliza and Nicole focused on improving patient education around relapse to increase autonomy, agency and confidence in their patients. Their work had a dual focus: to help people with MS recognise the signs of relapse and understand how to manage them, and to reduce the anxieties people feel around relapse by providing comprehensive information and guidance.

The other three projects were well-deserved runners up.

Niamh gathered opinions and concerns from patients currently receiving intravenous natalizumab to find out their thoughts on potentially switching to a subcutaneously-administered form of the treatment given its potential benefits for both patients and the NHS to reduce hospital attendances and human resource. The feedback she received helped direct plans for a future service, and determine the content of a patient-facing leaflet responding to the common concerns and queries raised.

Another patient engagement project came from Sarah German, who decided to begin a service review and improvement process with user engagement through a combination of face to face and virtual engagement.

In Rebecca's area, disease-modifying treatments are provided via homecare services, and she realised that there were significant delays between multidisciplinary agreement to commence treatment, and treatment arriving with the patient. Her project set out to reduce that time lapse by mapping out the ideal process, mapping the delays, challenges and barriers onto this, and generating solutions to overcome these problems.

All of the class' project posters, along with every other intermodule project from the past five years (!) can be found online via our projects section. You can also find a five year review across many brilliant projects like those of this Foundation class in our latest education with impact report.