Today we are marking the successful first year of the Medical Education Resource Center (MERC) at BHC, supported by Open Medicine Foundation with a message from our Education Director, Tahlia Ruschioni.
I am often asked when we will know that our medical education has reached enough clinicians to make a difference for patients with ME/CFS, Long COVID, fibromyalgia and related conditions. Last week I attended the National Nurse Practitioner Symposium where our very own FNP-C, Jen Bell, provided two 90-minute lectures on the assessment and management of post-viral syndromes and ME/CFS.
She asked the room of clinicians if they were seeing Long COVID and nearly the entire room raised their hand. Then she asked how many knew what do to with these patients, and no one raised their hand. Right there, in that conference room, BHC was making a difference. Our education was equipping a room full of practitioners from around the country with knowledge and tools to go back into their community and treat their patients. (Pictured right.)
While BHC’s clinic cannot meet the needs of the millions of patients in this country (and around the world), our education channels years of clinical expertise and research directly into noteworthy outlets where medical providers receive their education, such as Grand Rounds, Project ECHO programs, Medscape recordings, VuMedi videos, national symposiums, conferences, enduring CME (continuing medical education) and the very resources found on our website. We are generating change.
With our foothold in education, we have the duty to show the medical community that ME/CFS is a real disease. That Long COVID is a real disease. And the ambiguity that surrounds the defining disease characteristic of post-exertional malaise/post-exertional symptom exacerbation (PEM/PESE), isn’t illusive, rather it is an explainable and real illness process in those with ME/CFS.
This is why we have partnered with Open Medicine Foundation and focused our attention on producing assets that will educate patients, their care network and medical care team as they navigate the management and murky waters of PEM/PESE.
- The Crash Survival Guidebook offers insights, guidance, and tools to better understand how a crash occurs and ways to support the body’s critical needs during a crash.
- Our growing repository of education geared toward rehabilitative professionals (physical and occupational therapists) redefines what it means to move and adapt the daily living needs in those with PEM/PESE.
Our new seven-part PEM/PESE video series written by Dr. Brayden Yellman is frankly, amazing. I have yet to see this level of scientific and evidence-informed detail in any other educational product on PEM/PESE. This video series gives voice to every patient who is suffering with this disease because it shows that there are real physiological changes happening with PEM/PESE.
Bateman Horne Center has raised the bar. It is time that the medical community acknowledge that even though we do not have a biomarker for ME/CFS, it really isn’t that ambiguous after all, you just have to look at the science.
Lucinda Bateman, MD, is a renowned clinician, researcher, and educator. Her Johns Hopkins University Medical School training instilled an approach to care that she has employed throughout her career - the patient comes first and the unknown or unexplained does not equate to a lack of proper and compassionate care. Since starting her own practice in 2000, she has served on six boards or committees, been the principal investigator for 45 studies, authored/coauthored 40 journal articles, served as adjunct instructor and adjunct assistant professor in the University of Utah Departments of Preventative Medicine, Internal Medicine, and Anesthesiology, and lectured around the world.