Educational strategic goals

Patients and Public

The educational goals of arc are directed towards both patients (and their carers) and the public and to health care professionals charged with managing patients with musculoskeletal diseases.

1. Public engagement

As the major body involved in furthering and disseminating knowledge on musculoskeletal disorders:

  • arc has a responsibility for public engagement on issues of relevance
  • arc should be both reactive and proactive in making such a contribution to the media, policy makers and other stakeholders where appropriate
  • arc is committed to using its knowledge to ensure that society achieves the fullest benefits of the research and other activities it supports

2. Patients and other carers

  • It has a responsibility for ensuring that the results of the research it funds is communicated to patients and their families both for the purposes of information but also to guide their management and understanding of their own condition
  • arc is committed to identifying not only the knowledge, but also the health care needs, of patients and carers
  • arc is not a patient self help organisation and does not provide a local network of individuals whose remit is to provide education and guidance to patients, their families and the general public

Health Care Professionals

1. Health care professional undergraduate education

The first exposure to musculoskeletal disorders is during the undergraduate course.  Most of arc’s undergraduate attention has been focused on medical students but is committed to enhancing the education of all health care undergraduates in relevant fields   

  • arc is committed to using the undergraduate period to stimulate interest in musculoskeletal diseases in general and in musculoskeletal research in particular
  • arc is also committed to ensuring the highest quality delivery of the undergraduate curriculum in its area of interest and aims to provide leadership to Medical Schools in the latter’s role as the responsible bodies for delivering such education

2. Postgraduate Professional Education

Hospital Specialists

  • arc is committed to ensuring that rheumatologists, orthopaedic surgeons and other relevant specialists practising in the UK have the best available knowledge, grounded where relevant in robust research and accumulated experience, to guide them in the delivery of care
  • arc believes that this goal requires both an understanding of the practical issues involved in delivering patient care but also in ensuring an up to date understanding of the causes and nature of the diseases managed
  • arc has a specific goal in providing the skills for rheumatologists to enhance and encourage their role as both researchers and educators

General Practitioners

  • arc accepts that both currently, and increasingly in the future, primary care practitioners will play the major role in diagnosing and managing patients with musculoskeletal disorders
  • arc is committed to help provide access to appropriate educational activities and materials to those entering primary care as well as part of continuing education
  • arc recognises that there are specific issues in relation to delivering education in primary care, given the demands from other areas of medicine and the workload demands which may require specific solutions

3. Other Health Professionals

  • arc accepts, as with general practitioners, that currently and increasingly in the future, other health professionals, particularly (though not exclusively) nurses, physiotherapists and occupational therapists will play a major, including frontline, role in diagnosing and managing patients with musculoskeletal disorders
  • arc accepts that this changing role has not been matched by the level of  contribution to musculoskeletal health care professional education
  • arc therefore aims to identify the needs and demands in these groups and work with all relevant bodies to identify a means of satisfying these