A podcast series brought to you by the International Spinal Cord Society (ISCoS). With each episode, we will speak with experts from all over the world to discuss various aspects of spinal cord injury including etiology, prevention and care, providing valuable insights regarding the most up to date information for those providing care for the spinal cord injured. Collaboration is the key and at the heart of what ISCoS does. The podcast series will be an extension of ISCoS, philosophy to make “Life after a spinal cord injury happy, meaningful and worth living..”
In this episode, Dr Samford Wong, Chair of the newly formed nutrition special interest group, is joined by fellow group members Sharon Lee, Firas Sarhan and Hanne Bjorg Slettahjell as they discuss the plans and developments for this SIG. There will also be a Nutrition SIG workshop to be held in ISCoS 2024, more details to come.
The opinions of our host and guests are their own; ISCoS does not endorse any individual viewpoints, given products or companies.
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
Speaker 1:
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 Excos Scientific Meeting. Each bonus track will have discussions with speakers, delegates, partners, Excos Committee chairs and teams attending the Excos 2023. Join us to find out what the hot topics of the day are within SCI Care. We hope you enjoy listening.
Speaker 3:
I am Dr Sam Fungong. I am the newly formed Excos nutrition specialist interest group chair. I have my committee government panel colleagues with me. I'll let Ferran to introduce herself.
Speaker 2:
Hi, thanks Anford. I'm Sharon Lee. I'm a speech and language therapist and I'm the communication officer for the SIG the Nutrition SIG so do follow us on Twitter. It's iscosnutrition. We want more people to follow us Over to Maraz.
Speaker 4:
I'm Fraz Sirhan. I'm the clear education leader at the National Spine District of Mandible Hospital. I am a member of the Nutrition SIG looking at the education section in terms of developing frameworks for professionals and for carers of spinal cord injury patients.
Speaker 2:
Right, I'm Hannah Bjergstafael. I'm from Sinos Rehabilitation Hospital in Norway, where I work part clinical, part research. I'm currently doing my PhD following traumatic spinal cord injuries in the first rehabilitation year.
Speaker 3:
And she is our secretary. He was a secretary.
Speaker 2:
And helping out a lot of important work.
Speaker 3:
So, yeah, I think one of the important things that why we want to do this group is we want something standardized and working. Within the spinal units and probably people who was talked about yesterday, we are minorities.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, we did talk about that and I think there's a lot of HPs, physios and OTs and medics and it is nice to have a special interest group that actually focuses on nutrition and there's so many factors to it. As for Razz Sirhan's education, we've got clearly the dietetics, but we've also got from a speech and language therapy point of view.
Speaker 3:
So about this, you know.
Speaker 2:
I'm very biased because obviously it means that I've got a link in for people with swallowing difficulties and how that links to nutrition as well.
Speaker 4:
So we've all got things. I think also, as a group, it's our duty and responsibility to ensure that whatever information we share in terms of education is really evidence-based practice that really could benefit our patients, and to ensure that we are utilising research into actually practice and translating it into our day-to-day care of our spinal cord injure patients, which is quite essential and important.
Speaker 2:
It's nice to see also that nutrition is taking a bigger part in these conferences, and I think this has been kind of overdue to do this. How this nutrition secret? Is really good for now started and we can really work on putting this more on the map as it's going on.
Speaker 4:
And I'm sure also with the help of Samad Adar. You know, members, we have new ideas of research and really development research across the centres in the UK and globally, because really this is an international presentation from Norway, from England, from other means.
Speaker 3:
We have members from at the moment I think it's 17 countries. So I think Sharon already mentioned about the Twitter and also the X. I do hear a lot of colleagues working in metabolic fields, cardiometabolic, even physical activities, I think also, we have to find a platform where we can communicate with others globally.
Speaker 4:
We are aiming to do a workshop for the next ESCO.
Speaker 2:
Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 4:
This is our really top objective. This is one of our top agenda.
Speaker 3:
We are hoping to do a potential study day next September. It will be in a top picture that will be shared with all colleagues in the group. I think one of the ideas is the timing of the pack. Absolutely the continuation of water to a criteria of stopping eating. That kind of things will be very interesting and stimulating.
Speaker 2:
There are interesting topics about quality of life and nutrition. We have lots of ideas. Because it is a new group, we feel really excited because there is so much that we can do At the convention. We had our first team's digital meeting a few weeks ago. We got our first face to face one this afternoon which is amazing.
Speaker 4:
Also this morning we listened to one of our colleagues presentation about vitamin D deficiency in smart code engineering. I think I would love to see the second part of it, looking at the impact of that deficiency in terms of the rehab process. The rehab programme and how it is having an impact on it. I think something for us to discuss is the team of direction for future research that we want to pursue and other things.
Speaker 3:
I just may add is Sharon and Anthony will do a newsletter.
Speaker 2:
Yes, these letters will be coming.
Speaker 4:
We will welcome others to actually come and be part of it, to be able to share the information with their centres, their teams and so on, to spread the word about evidence based practice and to make the patient and the client, or whatever you mean, the centre of our approach to anything. The patient is really our core centre to develop things for their benefit.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. That's great. So we are multi-disciplinary group already. More people are most welcome to join us and just be in touch with us.
Speaker 4:
We have no fees.
Speaker 2:
It's free Do you have to be an ESCOS member, but you have to be an ESCOS member Of course, so we are hoping to do this Workshop. The study day workshop.
Speaker 3:
Educational day. I hope to see you all there.
Speaker 2:
If you join, you can influence the programme as well. Maybe.
Speaker 4:
Definitely, and if you have any interesting articles you would like to share, you can share them with us so we can put them in all of that, or a newsletter for the group.
Speaker 3:
Thank you for my colleagues today to join me. I really enjoyed the conversations and our first podcast today and I'm looking forward to the future episode.
Speaker 1:
We hope you have enjoyed listening to our bonus collection of Edinburgh Conversations from ESCOS 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. Escos also invites you to the 63rd ESCOS Scientific Anyone Meeting from the 22nd to the 25th of September 2024. To save the date and more details, we'll follow on the 2024 themes, submitting an abstract and early birth registration. Thank you for listening.
