Co-presenters led the Reflections on Past, Present and Future Opportunities for Rheumatology Health Professionals session at ACR Convergence 2024. (Click to enlarge.)
ACR Convergence 2024—In a wide-ranging and engaging discussion, members of the Association of Rheumatology Professionals (ARP) tracked their progress over the years across clinical practice, research production and representation in the field, while outlining challenges and opportunities to come.
The session at ACR Convergence included a panel and an audience full of past presidents of the ARP—there were 15 past presidents in attendance, by one count—and highlighted the strides the field has made since 1970s and 1980s. To symbolize this past growth and stimulate future personal, professional and organizational growth, the session leaders distributed pins in the form of green sprouts for attendees to attach to their badges or lapels.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, patients were told to get ample bed rest and be careful with their movements, said session panelist Teresa Brady, PhD, an occupational therapist and psychologist and ARP president in 1991.
“We didn’t actually stress them at all,” she said. “Now, of course, we’re doing resistive exercise, aerobic exercise. We’ve changed our approach to exercise completely.”
Kam Nola, PharmD, MS, a pharmacist in Nashville who was in the audience, said it has been nice to see the advances in treatments from simply prescribing high-dose aspirin to, now, targeted therapies.
“It’s really cool to see the evolution,” she said.
Christine Stamatos, DNP, ANP-C, a nurse practitioner in audience noted, though, that, “In the era of treatments we have, we’ve stopped using [physical therapists] and [occupational therapists] and I think we’re doing [patients] a huge disservice. And I think we need to go back and recognize the value of my PT and OT friends. I refer to OT all the time for my patients who just can’t get themselves together, who need to improve their quality of life, who need to engage in life better, and I learned that through being involved in this organization. Prior to that I had no idea what an OT did. I thought all they did was hands.”
Progress Via Research
Dr. Brady said major changes have come in the form of research as well, allowing the field to move more toward evidence-based practice. The founding of the Arthritis Care & Research (AC&R) journal was a cornerstone of this change, she said.
“Our recommendations now were built on reasonably designed studies and well-answered questions,” rather than anecdotes or studies with an insufficient number of patients, she said, quoting a commentary on research evolution published in 1994 in a special issue on exercise and arthritis. “We weren’t leaning on our sacred cows anymore.”1
Patti Katz, PhD, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who was in the audience, said the entire thinking around clinical and research goals has changed from where it was in the 1980s when she entered the field.
“When you said you were going to look at patient-reported fatigue or pain, it was like, ‘Who cares?” she said. “And now we have this great science where we actually have a whole body of work around patient-reported outcomes, and they are often used as the primary outcomes.”
Basia Belza, PhD, MSN, FAAN, panelist, ARP president in 2000–2001, and professor of biobehavioral nursing and health informatics at the University of Washington, encouraged ARP members to take advantage of the resources that are available, including the AC&R journal and the Rheumatology Research Foundation (RRF).
“As a journal comes into your office or your work station, take a look at it every month and see what’s in it that’s applicable to your practice,” she said.
Numerous past ARP presidents attended the session. (Click to enlarge.)
As for the RRF, she suggested “being an advocate for yourself and your colleagues and let them really know what the unmet needs are, and areas where they can help, both research as well as training. They’re not just doing research, they also fund training.”
The ARP has gained a higher profile within the ACR over the years, panelists said. In the mid-1990s, the organization had a kind of “token representation” on ACR committees, Dr. Belza noted. That is no longer the case. There are also now two to four members from the ARP on each ACR committee, and the ARP has a full voting member on the ACR board, Dr. Brady said. Also, she said, the annual meeting is now fully integrated and ARP content is not relegated to the back of the program.
“We’ve made gains, we have a seat at the table, and we have a voice,” she said.
That increased role comes with a caveat, though, she said, because there are no ARP-specific committees, so the ARP has to remain attentive to leadership development opportunities and to meeting the variety of needs of its diverse membership.
Panelists drew attention to the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead, asking that the audience become involved and volunteer to be an ARP representative on a committee, or to review abstracts, or just to speak up and help the ARP grow.
“When you go back home, talk to your colleagues and see if you can recruit them into the membership,” Dr. Brady said.
Gregory Gardner, MD, the Annual Meeting Planning Committee Chair, also encouraged ARP members to be even more engaged.
“Convergence is primarily a scientific meeting,” he said, “but we’ve noticed over the years that the number of abstracts submitted from the ARP has decreased. So I encourage you to submit your science to this meeting. We want to hear about what you’re doing and how you’re moving the field of rheumatology forward.”
He also encouraged members to bring new professionals into the fold.
“Bring your students and get them involved in your research and bring them to the meeting so they get that identity.”
Thomas Collins is a freelance medical writer based in Florida.
References
- Moncur C. Introduction: revisiting the sacred cows. Arthritis Care Res. 1994 Dec;7(4):167–8. doi: 10.1002/art.1790070402.
