SCI Care: What Really Matters
SCI Care: What Really Matters
Behind the Scenes at the 62nd ISCoS Scientific Meeting with Mohit Arora and Jacob Shuffl
In this bonus episode, we caught up with Mohit Arora, Senior Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney talking with student and colleague PhD student Jacob Shoffl at the Psychosocial pre-conference day on the 8th Oct during ISCoS 2023. They discuss their biggest takeaways of the day and why they are ISCoS members.
We hope you enjoy it.
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The SCI Care: What Really Matters podcast aims to provide valuable insights and the most up-to-date information for those providing care to people with spinal cord injury (SCI) worldwide. The vision of the International Spinal Cord Society (ISCoS) is to "facilitate healthy and inclusive lives for people with spinal cord injury or dysfunction globally".
Contact us directly with any questions or comments at iscos@associationsltd.co.uk
Welcome to our bonus episode of SCI Care. What really matters the Edinburgh Conversations. I am Dr Ali Jumous, the President of the International Spine Court Society. You are about to hear a selection of interviews recorded live in Edinburgh during the course of the 60 seconds ESCO scientific meeting. Each bonus track will have discussions with speakers, delegates, partners, ESCO's committee chairs and teams attending the ESCO's 2023. Join us to find out what the hot topics of the day are within SCI Care. We hope you enjoy listening.
Speaker 2:Hi, my name is Jacob Shuffle, I'm a PhD candidate from the University of Sydney and I'm here with my name is Mohit Arora.
Speaker 3:I'm one of the senior research fellow at the University of Sydney. Jake and me work together and we also work with Ashley Craig, who is one of the speakers for this workshop today, this morning, and I think this is a great initiative and I know these workshops have been running for many, many years and I think I'm fascinated to see how the numbers of people with different disciplines are increasing over the years and it always surprises that, how, as a group, we come together and can achieve a lot for like different stakeholders in the spinal cord injury field.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is my first time at ESCO and it's been really good just putting names to faces. Usually, as a researcher, all you do is just read an author's name and that's all you tend to get. But it's really nice putting together and just meeting the community. That's generally just on paper usually, so it's nice having everyone come together. What do you find the impact of coming to ESCO?
Speaker 3:I will say Jake, it has two faults for me.
Speaker 3:So when I started involving with ESCO which was my first ESCO was 2009 in Florence, and it seems like to me that there is already a group of people who are doing amazing work and, over the period of time when I'm engaging with them, making some good connections, collaboration, learning from them, giving us ideas like how we can achieve something good a thing in our units, also giving back to them how we are doing it. So it's like a shared roles, what we played in the group and learn from each other. And I think the second part of that conversation is also like now I consider ESCO as my family, second family, and you can see how, over the period of year, when you keep coming to it, you start knowing people more and more and then you meet them as if you're like going back home, wherever, in whichever part of the world it happens. So, yeah, I feel like I belong here and it's a feeling of belongingness which is like more personal level, but also like, at the same time, I grow professionally a lot over the period of years.
Speaker 2:I think it's great coming with Moe here as well, because he's a bit of a celebrity here, so he just introduces everyone does him and he just introduces you to all these friends, so it's really nice. I also find it's good you get so many good ideas from other people. Even watching this psycho social just the first sort of session you just get so many ideas that you just haven't thought about before and it's really nice to be able to go home and just think about them. I think I'll be definitely bringing that up when we go back home and then also talking to people who have very similar research ideas, because it can be quite isolating sometimes. Yes, you got your working team, but outside of that you don't have much connection. Well, I find it's an early career researcher. So, yeah, it's good meeting these people and finding learning from their experience and seeing that they're in a similar sort of boat.
Speaker 3:I think for the next upcoming session for this psycho social workshop I will want to see more from that perspective because I don't remember the program for the whole day in my mind right now, but I know there is a wide range of topics, what they're covering and I'm very much interested in knowing different perspective because I know, even if the universal guidelines for managing spinal cord injuries are very similar, but each particular center from different parts of the world cater the guidelines depending on their needs and they adapt it based on that. So I'm very interested if, for example, something is not working or it's not a very clear process in my unit, how I can learn from others and bring that knowledge back to my center and maybe there is a different way of or a better way of doing things which can save time and energy and even like health dollars per se. But I also like think that we also like now started interesting in this area where we think people with spinal cord injury, when they're like, actually admitted to the hospital, there's so much they need to do in a day and you know, same thing, like it's a psychosocial workshop and I think we all have to come together as a multi-disciplinary team members and see how we can actually not make this as a burden to people in their everyday life when they're in the hospital, rather than make it more efficient way of assessing, treating and they're also feel that they are inclusive in the in the discussions. So that's my short takeaway from this workshop. Yeah, I mean, I mean like I will see and I keep encouraging Jake that it was one of the questions I asked him will you consider again his course in coming years? And he said yes, I will go to.
Speaker 3:This is cause if I like it, I will definitely try and seek some funding and go back to his course. But then when he said to me like he likes it and I asked the definition, what is the definition of? What are you looking forward to it? Like that you like? So maybe Jake can answer to that like quickly what is the liking?
Speaker 2:I think, like I said earlier, just meeting so many different people from so many different disciplines really nice and gives you really get too excited, I suppose, for future research and what you can do.
Speaker 3:I am a member of his course. I started my professional career in 2005, working as a physio, and I think nothing against clinical rule versus research role. And at some stage of my career, when I started looking from a research perspective and clinical perspective, I thought when I was working as a clinical person full time, there is a stage when there is nothing new to learn. You just keep doing the same thing every day. Yes, there is a uniqueness to each person you are treating so much to give to them, their family, their carer. But I think, like when I started transitioning to some of the research role, I could see in my professional career that I can also make a huge impact by just doing one little research and it can impact the whole SCI population, not just that one person. Which I was doing more clinically.
Speaker 3:Yes, in clinical role I enjoyed it. I really enjoy that role as well. But I think at the same time, if I want to measure the two roles it's entirely my perspective I think I can make more impact with research compared to my clinical roles. The second thing I want to add here that I will say like when I become like more full time researcher, I could see that the transition of my work is acknowledged internationally. And to get that work acknowledged you need to present, you need to have a face in the international audience and I think SCOS gave me that platform as an international platform where I can learn and give back more to the society and be more acknowledged. Like acknowledgement is important for researcher If you don't publish, you don't write, you're not acknowledged in the field. So that's my short answer to that.
Speaker 4:What I'm looking forward to most as becoming a new SCOS member. I was fortunate that the SRI grant funded me to come on to this conference, and this is my first conference I've ever been to. So far it's been amazing. I'm really excited to listen to other people in my field to research autonomic function and its relationship to psycho social health. So listening to some of the speakers today was amazing and I hope to get to talk to them over the coming days. And then also in the coming days we've also got a few speakers on autonomic functions, so it'd be great to talk to them and connect with them as well.
Speaker 1:We hope you have enjoyed listening to our bonus collection of Edinburgh conversation from SCOS 2023. As always, you can listen to these episodes and all episodes from the podcast provider of your choice. If you have any questions or suggestions, we would love to hear from you. Email them to admin at escosorguk. Scos also invites you to the 63rd SCOS Scientific Anyone Meeting from the 22nd to the 25th of September 2024. To save the date and more details will follow on the 2024 themes submitting an abstract and early birth registration. Thank you for listening.