News

BSO shortlisted for Charity of the Year award

The BSO was proud to join other nominees in the Charity Times Awards 2010 for a special ceremony at the London Hilton on Park Lane on 1 September 2010.

The BSO was one of seven charities nominated in the Charity of the Year (income £1m +) category of the awards, which are designed to recognise and reward excellence in the management and co-ordination of all charitable activities.

In his welcome speech, Charity Times editor Andrew Holt said that the 2010 judging panel, which represented the leading figures in the UK charity sector, had agreed that this year’s entries had been of the highest quality ever.

Other nominees along with the BSO in the Charity of the Year (income £1m +) category were BTCV, Broadway Lodge, Chicks (Country Holidays for Inner City Kids), Concern Universal, Drinkaware and Warwickshire & Northamptonshire Air Ambulance, with BTCV named the winner.

“It was a great tribute to the hard work and dedication of the BSO team as a whole to have been part of a shortlist of this calibre,” said BSO Principal and Chief Executive Charles Hunt.

• For more information about Charity Times and its annual awards, please go to: www.charitytimes.com

Photo by : Andrew Wiard

BSO at Mint Street Park Open Day

A team of BSO staff and students took osteopathy outdoors when they provided demonstrations and ran an information stand at the Mint Street Park Open Day on 2 July 2010.

Organised by The Bankside Open Spaces Trust, Bankside Residents Forum and Blackfriars Settlement Partnership, this event provided food, entertainment and information stalls for the local community based near Mint Street Park in south east London:
the park is situated just a few minutes' walk from the BSO's Southwark Bridge Road clinical centre. It allowed the BSO team to meet local people, explain osteopathy to them, and give them information about the BSO patient services available to them.

The BSO is pleased to provide speakers and demonstrations of osteopathic treatment at workplace or community events. For more information, please email Deborah Hyde or call 07956 320 486.

(Photos by Ben James, BSO)

BSO team complete the FSI Thornbridge Hall Challenge

A team of BSO students and staff took part in the FSI Thornbridge Hall Challenge in Bakewell, Derbyshire on Saturday 5 June 2010, raising approximately £1,000 for the BSO in the process.

For more details, please click here.

The University of Bedfordshire and the BSO further cemented their strong relationship.

Professor Les Ebdon CBE, the University’s Vice Chancellor, and Charles Hunt, Principal of the BSO, met on 10 June 2010 to sign a partnership renewal contract.

The University validates the BSO’s Master of Osteopathy (M.Ost.) degree which is recognised by the General Osteopathic Council (GOsC). The first six-year agreement was signed in September 2004 and this renewal is for an identical period.

Professor Ebdon said: “We’re delighted to renew the agreement and genuinely believe a number of students who otherwise would have been unable to study osteopathy have been able to do so as a result of this partnership. The relationship has worked tremendously and it has undoubtedly brought more diversity to the BSO. I feel it’s important to keep these long-term strategic developments in place, even in these times of cuts in the current economic climate.”

Charles Hunt on behalf of the BSO was equally fulsome in his praise and said: “It’s been an excellent relationship and both institutions have benefited in my opinion. We’re delighted with the support that the University of Bedfordshire has offered us. The BSO is pleased to have the surety of funding for our students to continue their osteopathic education.”

Based in South London and founded in 1917, the BSO is the largest and oldest osteopathic school in the UK. The University and the BSO are continuing to work on a number of joint initiatives including research and a professional doctorate in osteopathy.

The photo shows the University of Bedfordshire’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Les Ebdon CBE (right), with the Principal of the BSO, Charles Hunt.

BSO Thanked on BBC Radio 2’s Paul O’Grady Show

The British School of Osteopathy (BSO) has been given recognition on BBC Radio 2’s Paul O’Grady’s Show, broadcast every Sunday (1700-1900).

On 30 May 2010, long standing BSO patient Keverne Weston sent in a letter to the show as part of their regular “Thank You’s” slot: his letter was made “Thank You Letter of the Week”. Keverne said:

"I have been attending the British School of Osteopathy in Southwark, with various aches and pains for many years. The clinic does a wonderful job providing patients with treatment by students who are supervised by tutors. They have helped me greatly and for a fraction of the cost one would normally pay. I have been treated by literally dozens of students, and encountered several tutors and receptionist and without exception, they have been painstaking – no pun intended – caring and, most importantly, charming. I can't thank them enough, so I hope you will Paul."

Paul O’Grady then thanked the BSO for its good service on Keverne’s behalf, sending a box of chocolates which is the show’s usual reward to the subject of their “Thank You Letter of the Week”. Paul O’Grady also said that he had experienced osteopathic treatment.

This was a very welcome acknowledgement of the BSO’s patient services, and the BSO would like to thank Keverne Weston for his thoughtfulness and support of the BSO.

(Report by Nicole Bristol-Robinson.)

2010 Virgin London Marathon: BSO tutors and student help “Team SIA” charity runners

A team of BSO tutors and students attended the 2010 Virgin London Marathon on Sunday 25 April to continue the BSO’s annual tradition of offering free osteopathic care to participants raising money for the Spinal Injuries Association (SIA).

Led by BSO Sports Clinic tutor Robin Lansman, the BSO team met outside Charing Cross station and headed to the Cabinet War Rooms, this year's SIA’s post-race supporters’ meeting point, where a space for the BSO to offer osteopathic post-race care had been madlable.

Along with Danny Church, a BSO Community Clinics Tutor, Robin briefed the 20-strong team on a treatment and management approach for post-marathon runners. He explained that one can expect marathon runners to present with a number of different knee, hip and ankle problems, as well as muscle cramping as a result of over-use or dehydration. With Danny, Robin demonstrated a number of different techniques to gently loosen up runners as well as some remedial techniques to improve their general poural stiffness post-race.

Simon Brierley, the SIA’s Community Peer Support Officer for the London area then talked to the team about his life as a wheelchair user as a result of a swimming accident fifteen years ago in which he broke his neck, leaving him partially paralysed. Simon also described his work for the SIA, talking to groups of spinal injury patients and encouraging them to join in with available activities for wheelchair users.

The BSO team then waited for their “patients” to arrive.year they worked with 57 patients during their five hours on-site, including runner Melody McLaren, who said: “A big ‘thank you’ to all the BSO team who helped me prepare for and finish the 2010 London Marathon - injury-free! - in a time of 5:24:57”.

(In the run-up to the marathon, “Team SIA” participants had also been offered osteopathic care via the BSO’s Sports Clinic, which runs weekly at its clinical centre on Southwark Bridge Road, central London.)

“This is the sixth year tinvolved with post-race care for SIA runners at the London Marathon, and it always proves to be a very intense and exciting – as well as useful – afternoon,” said Robin Lansman. “I learnng new each time, and the students also learn a huge amount from their contact with SIA participants.

Spring 2010: BSO gains vital funding via The Big Give

Thanks to The Big Give’s Christmas 2009 matched-funding challenge, the British School of Osteopathy has exceeded its £15,200 funding goal and has raised -- through Big Give donors’ online support -- a tremendous £26,500 for its work.

The Big Give website was created by Sir Alec Reed CBE to encourage philanthropy and give charities the chance to attract project funding. The Big Give allows proactive philanthropists to search quickly and anonymously for charitable projects in their field of interest. The aim is to enable donors to initiate conversations with charities whose project they may wish to fund.

Why not make an online donation to the BSO’s important work today via The Big Give?

If you would like more information, please search for the British School of Osteopathy on www.thebiggive.org.uk or contact Anna Somerset on a.somerset@bso.ac.uk or 020 7089 5336.

Have fun and help raise fund for the BSO – forthcoming fundraising events

Walking in the Derbyshire countryside and dragon boat racing in Kent: two fun ways to help the BSO this summer! To find out more click here.

BSO outreach work: 1st Place Parents and Children’s Centre, Southwark

The BSO has run a weekly osteopathy clinic for children aged 0-5 years at the 1st Place Parents and Children’s Centre since 2007. The centre is situated near Southwark’s Aylesbury Estate, in an area that has experienced great social disadvantage and exclusion.

The first patient of the day comes in and heads straight for a box of toys and books in the corner. He sits on the floor exploring its contents, immediately oblivious to everything else in the room.

In an instant, he has demonstrated one of the first challenges of providing osteopathic care for children: BSO community clinic tutor Andrea Rippe and his mother have a quick discussion about whether he’ll tolerate lying on the treatment table for treatment.

In fact, he’s very calm as Andrea begins work. Unlike some of this clinic’s young patients, he doesn’t wriggle about, squirm or kick. His mother reads a story book to him, showing him the pictures by holding the book over his head as he is treated.

As she treats him, Andrea is assisted by two senior BSO students. Because of the particular approaches needed in treating children, this BSO outreach clinic is a demonstration experience for the students. They don’t have their own patient lists, but instead they assist, learn from and work with either Andrea Rippe or her fellow community clinic tutor Anna Scullard, who both have specialist experience in paediatric osteopathy.

There’s an ongoing dialogue between Andrea, her students and the little boy’s mother about what she is doing; what’s she’s aiming to achieve and things to be aware of when treating a child who, like this little boy, has been diagnosed with cerebral palsy causing hemiplegia. This means that he has difficulty controlling muscles on the left side of his body, affecting his gait and use of his left hand and arm. He has recently had an MRI scan to discover more about his condition.

Andrea and her team agree to a short break in treatment, so that the little boy can choose some new toys and books to keep him interested. Then they resume gentle stretching techniques.

“I like bringing him to this clinic,” says his mother. “As well as treatment, they give me lots of advice: I can ask about practical things like what sorts of shoes to buy for him. I’m trying all the alternatives available for him: at this clinic I think they are helping him.”

1st Place Parents and Children’s Centre is situated in the shadow of the Aylesbury housing estate. Bright, clean, modern and colourful, it offers a range of services including a drop-in club for parents and toddlers, a weekly fathers’ group and a range of different opportunities for parents around child development, returning to work and other subjects. The centre also has a range of statutory and voluntary organisations offering health services other than osteopathy, such as health visiting, midwifery, family support, support for children with special needs etc. This is part of the enhanced Children’s Centre services on offer in the borough of Southwark, which aims to offer a wider range of approaches for parents to meet their children’s needs in addition to visiting their GP. The borough’s health visitors were involved in setting up the BSO’s weekly osteopathy clinic , and it is the health visitors who refer children to it.

“The BSO’s outreach clinic at 1st Place makes treatment available to a completely different population, who may never have heard of osteopathy or contemplated non-medical intervention for their children’s treatment,” says Andrea Rippe.

“The 1st Place centre is here for everyone, but our target audience is one that might not engage even with the statutory health services that you and I might take for granted. That might be because of language difficulties, cultural differences or previous experiences which they have had – they may not be accessing or actively avoiding mainstream services. We reach out and offer a slightly different entry point to engage them with basic services,” continues Nicola Howard, director of 1st Place. “With the weekly osteopathy clinic, we’re reaching out to families for whom there might otherwise be a financial barrier to accessing osteopathy: this weekly clinic is free.”

Whilst Andrea prepares to see her next patient, Anna Scullard and the students who are working with her greet a mother and two small daughters. One of the students immediately gets down on the floor, reading to and playing with the older girl, so that Anna can find out more about her sister’s condition. As Anna works on the girl’s stomach and back, she also gives her mother practical advice about the importance, with young children, of regular exercise and establishing daily routines such as toileting.

The mother accepts Anna’s tips gratefully. She is heavily pregnant with her third child and is finding everyday life with a young family increasingly tiring.

“It’s so helpful that this osteopathy clinic is available at the 1st Place Centre, just around the corner from where we live,” she says. Echoing the experience of so many other families during the recession, she also mentions that redundancy has made it a tough year for them, including financially.

“Working in this clinic is a real privilege particularly because the service we provide is free for the community,” adds Anna Scullard. “It is a huge relief for us not to have to consider the financial implications of a course of treatment when managing a child's condition.”

Free treatment is an obvious benefit for patients using this weekly BSO outreach clinic, but what are the benefits to senior BSO students who attend it?

“The holistic approach to healthcare is much more immediate in paediatric osteopathy,” explains Andrea Rippe. “Paediatric patients reflect more immediately their internal and external environment – their ‘reservoir of compensation’ to buffer life stressors is much smaller than most adult patients, so altering one aspect of their world can have substantial repercussions for their health status. This outreach clinic also reinforces the importance of observation as well as clinical testing, and the importance of environmental factors on health of babies/children.”

As well as needing to use very different approaches to treatment from those the students are learning in their everyday contact with adult patients at the BSO, the children attending this outreach osteopathy clinic are attending with very different complaints – such as cerebral palsy or developmental delay – thus providing students with understanding of the edges of the range of ‘normal’. This all firmly underpins many of the principles of the bio-psycho-social model of health.

“Equally as importantly, the students are able to observe the varying cultures, ethnicities and socio-economics of the patients presenting to 1st Place and how that might influence the family dynamics, expectations of the child and interactions with the child,” says Anna Scullard. “They can see first hand how this may influence health and development in those very important early years.”

“I like working with patients who come to the BSO’s outreach clinics which are based within the NHS, like this one at the 1st Place Centre,” says final year student Paul Johnson. “We get to see very different patients here. They often know very little or nothing about osteopathy before they come to us, so you learn a lot about how to talk to them and to communicate what they can expect, what you are doing and so on.”

Another patient arrives. His mother speaks limited English, so his father is translating what she is saying as they start to explain what’s wrong with their small son.

“For the BSO’s weekly clinic here at the centre, we get good take-up and good feedback. It is very rare that people don’t show up for their appointment,” says Nicola Howard. “We’re also finding that the clinic is being accessed by both families using our nursery as from the wider reach area– they can have a chat with a health visitor who can then make the referral.”

As she finishes working with a chirpy toddler and prepares for her next patient, a newborn baby, Andrea Rippe sums up:

“Anna and I both get so much from working at this clinic. It’s about the opportunity to offer treatment to people in my local community; the lovely atmosphere at 1st Place; the feedback from patients; the excitement of students as they learn and make discoveries about paediatric osteopathy and, most of all, the chance to make a real difference to people's lives.”

BSO manager wins RICS student award

BSO Facilities and Purchasing Manager Elizabeth Carter has won a Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) award for achieving the highest overall mark in her class during her recently-completed Facilities Management studies.

She was honoured at the RICS London and South East Student Awards ceremony, held in central London on 3 March 2010, which was attended by other award winners, their guests, university representatives and RICS matrics.

The ceremony rewarded high achievers on RICS accredited courses at its 12 regional partner universities. Elizabeth studied at the University of Westminster.

Anglo-European College of Chiropractic and British School of Osteopathy agree Memorandum of Understanding

The Anglo-European College of Chiropractic (AECC) and the British School of Osteopathy (BSO) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), focused on the development of a close and long-term working relationship.

The AECC, formed in 1965 and based in Bournemouth, runs a Master of Chiropractic (MChiro) degree course, which is validated by Bournemouth University. The BSO, established in 1917 and based in central London, offers an M.Ost (integrated Masters) degree programme, validated by the University of Bedfordshire.

The MoU will give AECC and BSO staff the opportunity to learn from one another through the observation of lectures, seminars and tutorials run as part of these courses.

Back row, from left to right: Jorge Esteves (Head of Postgraduate and Student Research); Ian Maguire (Head of ICT); Jennifer Bolton (Director of Research & Graduate Studies, AECC); Edward Rothman (Director of Clinic, AECC); Jeremy Lewis (Director of Administration, AECC); Steven Vogel (Vice Principal, Research & Quality) and Simeon London ( Head of Clinical Practice).
Front row left to right: Bex Morrison (Acting Course Leader); Joanna Smith (Finance Director); Kenneth Vall (Principal, AECC); Charles Hunt (Principal and CEO); Haymo Thiel (Vice Principal, AECC) and Elizabeth Carter (Facilities and Purchasing Manager).

Both institutions offer postgraduate and continued professional development courses, which will also provide scope for the two colleges to gain information from one other. Further objectives of the MoU will see staff and students given access to the AECC and BSO’s patient treatment clinics, providing opportunities to see first-hand the methods and techniques used in chiropractic and osteopathic diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation. Joint research projects may also be established between the two organisations in the future.

The AECC campus expanded in 2009 with the opening of a new £3.8m chiropractic teaching clinic, which has 34 dedicated treatment rooms, a functional sports and exercise rehabilitation centre, ultrasound and x-ray facilities. The BSO enlarged their facilities in May 2008, opening a new osteopathic clinical centre on Southwark Bridge Road, central London at a cost of £5.2m. Both are the largest in their respective professions in Europe.

While chiropractic and osteopathy have vastly different origins, there are far more similarities between the two professions in the 21st century than differences. Chiropractic and osteopathy are primary healthcare professions which take a holistic approach in dealing with various clinical conditions, most commonly those associated with the musculoskeletal system. In May 2009, the use of both chiropractic and osteopathy were recommended for NHS patients with persistent, non-specific, lower back pain by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE).

AECC Principal Kenneth Vall and BSO Principal Charles Hunt recognise the similarities between chiropractic and osteopathic teaching and treatment at their respective institutions, and it is hoped the MoU between the AECC and BSO will be the catalyst for closer workings between the two professions in the future.

On the MoU, Kenneth Vall comments: “I am delighted that we have reached this level of agreement with the BSO. Formalising our relationship will send a signal to chiropractic and osteopathic professions that working together can help enhance reputation. It will also improve our ability to serve the public.”

Charles Hunt added: “I am very pleased to be able to sign this agreement which formalises a relationship we have had with the AECC for a number of years. Both institutions are leaders in their field and the ability to share good practice can only be of the benefit to both professions in the future.”

BSO joins Better Bankside

The British School of Osteopathy (BSO) is pleased to announce that it has joined Better Bankside, which is extending its sphere of influence into Borough High Street where the BSO's teaching centre is based.

Better Bankside exists to improve the quality of the Bankside area of London, and to enhance the competitiveness of its businesses. It is a Business Improvement District (BID): BIDs seek to improve a given location for commercial activity. The Better Bankside BID is owned, funded and led by the 300+ employers who are Better Bankside members and who pay its annual 'levy'.

Better Bankside offers a wide range of services and benefits to its members and the wider community. These range from the Bankside Travel Plan – which sets ambitious targets to increase walking and cycling journeys in the area as part of the daily commute and during the day – and the Bankside Urban Forest strategy – which encourages investment in public spaces to make the area a better place to live, work and visit – to initiatives such as a Residents Forum, street safety patrols, recycling, car clubs, graffiti removal, special "Buzz Cards" giving discounts and offers to the 50,000+ people who work for companies belonging to Better Bankside, plus a Business Club and networking opportunities for local businesses.

BSO Principal and Chief Executive Charles Hunt says: "I have always been impressed by the work Better Bankside does to improve the area for everyone, so when its team contacted us about the extension of its borders, and invited the BSO to become a member, I was very pleased. The work Better Bankside does will help give BSO staff and patients a more positive experience of the Borough area, and as an organisation it offers the BSO an important forum in which to promote the affordable and accessible osteopathic care we offer.”

Better Bankside Chief Executive Peter Williams says: “We received a very enthusiastic response from the BSO to our proposal to include them in the area. Even before we go live there on 1 April we have identified several ways in which we can collaborate to mutual benefit. In particular our discussions on joint interventions to improve health at the workplace hold much promise.”

• From 1 March onwards, all Better Bankside "Buzz Card" members will be entitled to receive osteopathic care at the BSO's "community partnership rate" of £15 per appointment at the BSO's clinical centre, on production of their Buzz Card each time they come for an appointment. For more information, please contact clinicappointments@bso.ac.uk or 020 7 407 0222.

• Better Bankside is the third Business Improvement District in the UK; the second in London and the first south of the river. For more information about the work of Better Bankside, please visit: www.betterbankside.co.uk

BSO promotes osteopathy at Blackfriars Settlement

BSO community clinic tutor Andrea Rippe gave a talk and a demonstration of osteopathy to members of the Blackfriars Settlement lunchtime pensioners club at their centre on Rushworth Street, London, SE1 on 18 February 2010.

She was joined by long-standing BSO patient Su Kirkby, who spoke about her first-hand experience of osteopathic treatment, student Lizanne Jansen van Vuuren and BSO marketing and communications officer Debbie Hyde.

The BSO offers concessionary rate osteopathy (£10 per appointment) to anyone aged over 60 years at its clinical centre on Southwark Brige Road. The team were delighted that several members of the audience asked to book in immediately as new patients, and to hear positive feedback from other attendees who had previously used the BSO’s services.

The BSO is pleased to provide speakers and demonstrations of osteopathic treatment at local events. For more information, please contact Deborah Hyde at: d.hyde@bso.ac.uk or 07956 320 486.

BSO awarded Best Companies star status

The British School of Osteopathy (BSO) has been awarded one star status in the Best Companies 2010 accreditation project.

Best Companies – the name behind The Sunday Times’ Best Companies To Work For list – judge organisations on their excellence in every area throughout the workplace, and on their commitment to workforce engagement.

Best Companies awards star status based on feedback from employee surveys and organisation questionnaires, and using an academically rigorous methodology. It believes that focusing on employees brings real benefits for organisations such as better staff retention, reduced recruitment costs and greater financial performance. One star is first class, two stars are outstanding and three stars are extraordinary.

This year, 1,086 organisations entered the Best Companies accreditation. Of them, 410 organisations achieved star status accreditation this year. (Please see “Notes to editors” for further background information about Best Companies.)

The BSO will now receive a listing in the Best Companies 2010 guide. It has also received detailed data from the Best Companies’ survey process, to enable it to carry out ongoing workplace engagement work.

BSO Principal Charles Hunt comments: “As a caring organization our ethos is to put people first, whether it’s our patients, students or our staff, so we are thrilled that as a small charity we have achieved one star status. This demonstrates that our staff feel engaged and valued at the BSO”.

BSO community work secures major funding

The British School of Osteopathy (BSO) is delighted to have been awarded £55,992 from the Government’s Hardship Fund towards its outreach community work.

To find out more, click here.

BSO backs Southwark’s 5k Your Way runners

The BSO is proud to be offering concessionary rate osteopathic treatment to runners from Southwark Council and NHS Southwark (Primary Care Trust) who will be participating in the 5K Your Way fun run and walk on 28 April 2010 in Regent’s Park, central London.

5K Your Way is open to staff from London boroughs. The event targets local authority employees of all abilities including less active individuals, aiming to encourage participants to increase their physical activity levels. By entering the race participants automatically make a donation to charity – it is expected that there will be approximately 200 runners from Southwark.

5K Your Way is organised by PRO-ACTIVE Central London: one of five sub-regional sport and physical activity partnerships operating across Greater London.

To help Southwark’s runners prepare for the event the BSO – the UK’s oldest school of osteopathy – will be offering them concessionary rate osteopathic treatment at just £10 per appointment during February, March and April at its clinical centre on Southwark Bridge Road – the busiest and largest of its kind in Europe.

This arrangement forms part of the BSO’s mission to make osteopathy accessible and affordable to everyone.

BSO National Student Survey results

The BSO is scoring high levels of satisfaction amongst its students, according to the findings of the 2009 National Student Survey (NSS).

The NSS, which provides final year students with an opportunity to make their opinions count, shows that more than 90% of the BSO students who participated found their studies intellectually stimulating; felt that BSO staff had made studying osteopathy interesting and were good at explaining things, and approved of the BSO’s library facilities.

89% approved of the way in which marking criteria had been made clear to them in advance, whilst 76% said that BSO marking and assessment arrangements were fair. The majority agreed that they had had prompt feedback on their work which had helped them to clarify things they hadn’t understood. In all of these areas, BSO student satisfaction showed increases compared to the previous survey.NSS results also showed that students receiving degrees in complementary medicine from the University of Bedfordshire, under whose aegis BSO osteopathy degrees are awarded, were ranked third in the country.

The BSO also conducts its own internal self assessment, canvassing the views of students from all years. The latest results underscore the NSS findings.

Commenting on the NSS results, BSO Principal and Chief Executive Charles Hunt said: “The BSO is dedicated to student-centred teaching and learning, so I’m delighted that the NSS results show we are succeeding in providing our students with what they require. But I’d like to encourage all current final year BSO students to take part in the 2010 NSS – it is a vital tool in helping us to continue to improve the overall student experience.”

The BSO is already responding to areas where student feedback from the NSS and its internal survey has indicated that there was room for improvement, including cleanliness of BSO buildings, storage space, communication of the BSO’s management structure and catering arrangements.

• As the National Student Survey (NSS) enters its sixth year, the 2010 survey is being launched this month (January) at most universities and colleges across the UK. Feedback from it will be used to help future students choose courses that best suit their needs and interests, and will also be used by national newspapers when compiling university league tables. The survey covers nearly all final year undergraduates studying for higher education qualifications: more than 223,000 students from 155 higher education institutions in the UK and 117 further education colleges in England took part in the 2009 survey, using it to anonymously voice their opinions on what they liked about their time at their chosen place of study, as well as the things they felt could have been improved. For more NSS information, please visit: www.thestudentsurvey.com

Hair-raising times at the BSO

For the second year running BSO students and staff spent the month of November getting sponsored whilst growing moustaches for the Movember men’s health campaign, raising over £1,500 for The Prostate Cancer Charity in the process.

Led by BSO Head of Clinical Practice Simeon London they all, as the Movember rules stipulate, started the month clean-shaven. They went on to grow and sport moustaches of varying degrees of hirsuteness and stylishness.

Movember also meant a close shave for BSO clinic tutor Danny Church. In a move deemed above and beyond the call of duty by his fellow “Osteotaches”, Danny raised funds via a sponsored head shave on 27 November. As our pictures show, his newly-grown moustache and eyebrows were the only facial hair he had left after fellow BSO clinic tutor Neil Rowe had completed his barbering duties.


The Movember campaign aims to raise awareness of men’s health issues, encouraging men to go for regular medical checks. Funds raised by the 2009 Movember campaign in the UK are being donated directly to The Prostate Cancer Charity. For more information, visit: www.movember.com



Our pictures show BSO clinic tutor Danny Church before, during and after his headshaving, and being congratulated by fellow “Osteotaches” (from left to right) student Steven Ojari and research administrator Sam Keeping. Please click on a photo to enlarge the image.

Photos by Ben James, BSO.

BSO outreach work: clinic at Ian Charleson Day Centre, Royal Free Hospital

The BSO is working to make osteopathy accessible to everyone. Here we profile our outreach work with people with HIV/AIDS at the Ian Charleson Day Centre at the Royal Free Hospital, north London:

“I am just so comfortable coming here: it’s like a second home to me. You can get different students treating you, but they all come from different backgrounds, so they can have different approaches which can be helpful, for example if I have a new problem. And they all know my HIV status, so I can be honest with them, which helps them to learn too.

“Lots of people think that, because there is now medication for HIV that can keep people alive you should just be grateful and get on with it, but there can still be lots of problems in dealing with HIV. The osteopathy I get is helping to keep things under control. I don’t know what I would have done if this clinic had not been started: it is fantastic that my doctor steered me here.” Sally, BSO patient.

Since 2004 the BSO has run an osteopathy clinic at the Ian Charleson Day Centre (ICDC), where the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust has been providing care for people with HIV/AIDS since 1989. The clinic is a unique collaboration between a UK osteopathic education provider and a hospital trust.

The ICDC’s multidisciplinary team of around 70 people includes nursing staff, medical staff, counsellors and administrators, any of whom can refer patients for free BSO osteopathy as part of the negotiated, patient-centred support the ICDC provides. Patients can also self-refer, but treatment – provided by two BSO tutors with a specialised interest in HIV/ AIDS and final year BSO osteopathy degree students – is currently restricted to patients registered at the ICDC.

As tutors and students set up for the weekly Friday afternoon clinic, patients are already arriving. There is a relaxed, informal atmosphere.

“I always wait for Fridays!” jokes one middle aged man waiting to book in, as students consult their appointment lists.

“Osteopathic treatment at this clinic has multiple aims,” explains Paul Blanchard, BSO Research Fellow and Director of the BSO’s work with people with HIV/AIDS. “To address the pain, fatigue and distress associated with HIV infection. To encourage maximum function, mobility and independent living within the limitations of each patient’s ability. To allow patients the choice of a non-pharmacological method of pain and symptom control: this can be especially appropriate for a patient population that is already heavily medicated with antiretrovirals and other drugs. And last but very much not least, to offer a system of healing and care which addresses the physical isolation, fear and stigma which some people with HIV experience.”

Stigma is, sadly, something that Sally has experienced first-hand, even within the world of complementary health care provision. She recalls having divulged her HIV status in another setting, one where no invasive treatment nor contact with bodily fluids was going to take place.

“Nevertheless, I have never seen so many different excuses to suddenly wear plastic gloves!” she says wryly. “So I was not relaxed and they were not relaxed with me. But at this BSO clinic the tutors are across all the latest developments and research into HIV, medication and so on. It’s ideal to have an osteopathy clinic based in the ICDC, which is at the cutting edge of care for people with HIV/AIDS.”

Sally has been coming to this BSO clinic since it opened, originally for knee problems related to muscle wastage, but also for lower back pain and other problems.

“HIV always attacks the weakest part of you,” she explains. “It feels as if things are ‘bunched up’ and they do stretching work. Today, I twisted my arm putting my seatbelt on, so they worked on that.”

Sally has lived with HIV since the 1980s.

“As people live longer with HIV, we are getting things like bone problems coming up, and osteoporosis,” she says. “So I think that we will increasingly need osteopathy, and there will be a need for increased cooperation between doctors and osteopaths.”

“People with HIV are now living for 20, 30, 40 years,” continues BSO clinic tutor Danny Church. There’s now quite a lot of research indicating that their bodies can ‘age’ approximately 15 years earlier, so that conditions like osteoarthritis can set in earlier for them. Osteopathy can play a key role in health care provision for people with HIV/AIDS with these sorts of conditions".

The clinic provides students with valuable exposure to patients with complex needs, both physical and psychosocial. As it gets under way in earnest, the afternoon’s team of six students are kept busy, presenting their findings to the tutors and seeking their advice on treatment. Danny Church encouragingly but sensitively talks one student through how best to treat a bereaved patient who has recently lost his partner. Gentle, soft tissue work is recommended.

“You’ve got the reassurance of knowing that they will understand and take into account everything that’s going on for you, including your mental health,” says Adam, another patient. “I’ve come here when I have been in crisis, crying my eyes out and frightened about what might be happening to me. They reassured me, but also cross-referred me to the palliative care team. That’s the good thing about the ICDC – it’s all here.

“It’s really good, knowing that you can drop in and out. I can chat to the osteopathy students freely about HIV: they and I are becoming very in tune with my body. So they are building up a body of knowledge about working with people with HIV as patients.”

“In the BSO’s clinical centre it is important that you learn correct technique, but here in this outreach clinic you can develop your own style of treatment a bit more,” adds BSO student Florence Leo. “And every week, our appointment lists are really full, so you are learning all the time about patient management and communication.”

Indeed, the clinic’s lists are currently so oversubscribed that it is only possible to offer patients appointments once a fortnight. Yet demand is so great that throughout the afternoon session patients regularly report to the reception desk, asking students if they can also put their names down for next week, just in case there are any cancellations.

“Since we began providing osteopathy here, there have been challenges of funding and finding accommodation,“ says Paul Blanchard. “But for a clinical unit to make available the five treatment rooms, reception services and ancillary space we use each week is a major concession. The progressive culture of the ICDC unit and staff should also receive mention – osteopathic service provision is still far from mainstream within the NHS.”

“It’s good to have that acceptance and support from the staff here for what we do, and feel that they think it’s useful for the patients, who have so many side effects from the drugs they are taking,” adds BSO student Jeanette Robson. “It’s nice to see patients and staff acknowledge that we have a role in managing and improving patients’ quality of life, if not in the virus itself.”

“There are only 36 placements in this clinic annually for final year BSO osteopathy degree students, but it’s very popular with them,” continues Paul Blanchard. “It’s a valuable learning opportunity in a multidisciplinary, NHS setting.”

“If this clinic wasn’t here it would be a great loss,” agrees Alex, another patient. “If, like me, you are working but on a low income, or if you cannot work, you can struggle to pay for the medicines and services you need for HIV. Things like osteopathy can be expensive privately, so it’s nice to have something free.

“I don’t mind at all being treated by students. They are excellent, and they always refer back to their tutors. There’s a real relationship of trust, and it’s good for them to be trying their techniques out. I did a first aid course at work and it was using dummies – I remember thinking this is no good, you really need to be learning on a real person.”

Alex has peripheral neuropathy, a condition that damages the nerve endings at the furthest points of the limb, starting in the feet and then progressing to the hands. It can be a direct result of the HIV virus, or more commonly a result of medication.

“At first I could not even put a shoe or sock on my feet; my back and legs are affected. But the 40 minute osteopathy sessions are excellent, “he says. “I feel better afterwards and I have a good night’s sleep after a treatment. This clinic gives me enormous value.”

· The BSO gratefully acknowledges the support of the Elton John AIDS Foundation and the Peter Moores Foundation for its work with people with HIV/AIDS.

BSO outreach event for Southwark Pensioners

Senior BSO clinical tutor Rob McCoy gave a talk and a demonstration of osteopathy to Southwark Pensioners at their centre in Camberwell, south east London on 21 October 2009.

He was joined by long-standing BSO patient Su Kirkby, who spoke about her first-hand experience of osteopathic treatment, student Tom Jordan and BSO marketing and communications officer Debbie Hyde.

Our photo shows Rob McCoy discussing osteopathic approaches, assisted by student Tom Jordan.

The BSO offers concessionary rate osteopathy (£10 per appointment) to anyone aged over 60 years at its clinical centre on Southwark Brige Road. The team were delighted that several members of the audience asked to book in immediately as new
patients, and to hear positive feedback from other attendees who had previously used the BSO’s services when it was based near Trafalgar Squar

The BSO is pleased to provide speakers and demonstrations of osteopathic treatment at local events. For more information, please contact Deborah Hyde at: d.hyde@bso.ac.uk or 07956 320 486.

The Young Vic Company signs up for BSO community partnership rate osteopathy

South London businesses also invited to apply

The British School of Osteopathy (BSO) is delighted this month (September 2009) to have signed an agreement with The Young Vic Company, giving its staff access to reduced rate BSO osteopathic treatment.

From its clinical centre on Southwark Bridge Road the BSO is committed to making osteopathy affordable and accessible to the whole community. It offers community partnership rate treatment (£15 per appointment, as opposed to £20 standard fee) to local businesses, groups and organisations with which it has developed reciprocal working relationships to promote osteopathy to staff or members.

The Young Vic Company’s staff are now eligible for BSO community partnership rate treatment by senior BSO osteopathy degree students, working under the guidance of qualified osteopath tutors. They include Paul Halter, Head of Construction at The Young Vic, who is a long standing BSO patient. He says: “As someone who has had some experience of back problems due to the nature of my work, I can highly recommend the BSO. Simply, it is the best treatment I’ve ever received and I’ve been using them for several years now without complaint. I’ve always found all of the staff and the students to be courteous and professional.”

Above: Exterior shot of Young Vic, photo by Philip Vile.

Osteopathy is a primary health care system, complementary to other medical practices, with a sound foundation in biomedical sciences. An important principal of osteopathy is the recognition of the body’s natural self-healing mechanisms. Almost anyone can benefit from osteopathic care.

• If you feel that you belong to a business, group or organisation that could benefit from a BSO community partnership relationship or would simply like to find out more, please contact: Simeon London, BSO Head of Clinical Practice: 0207 089 5363 or s.london@bso.ac.uk

BSO outreach work: Bethnal Green Health Centre pilot scheme

This BSO outreach clinic was based in east London from January 2009 – March 2010, whilst funding was available for it:

The Bethnal Green Health Centre is set amidst the noisy traffic and bustling crowds of London, just off a main road and a few minutes’ walk from Bethnal Green tube station. At the time of writing it was also undergoing major building and improvement works. These were to provide new facilities including separate treatment rooms for services such as the BSO’s osteopathy clinic, which ran one afternoon a week for patients of this busy NHS GP practice.

At the time of writing, the Bethnal Green Health Centre was temporarily operating from a series of portakabins, with BSO clinic tutor Danny Church and his team of senior osteopathy degree students organising their sessions from a tiny back office, and using the GPs’ consulting rooms for treating patients.

“Osteopaths need to be able to adapt to working effectively with patients in different settings, so this is very good experience for our students,” explained Danny Church cheerfully. “And it’s the same for everyone working here – it’s important for students to interact and become part of the wider health care team. They get to see, for example, the pressurised environment that many GPs have to work in, including having to make decisions about patients within a very short consultation time. For the future of osteopathy as a profession, increased understanding between osteopaths and the NHS can only be a good thing.”

“The treatment I’ve had, and the exercises I’ve been given to do have kept me walking, and have kept my pain bearable,” said one regular patient. Retired, she was keen to avoid having an operation, but did not want her problem left untreated. “I’d never heard of an osteopath or been to one before,” she continues. “Someone was telling me how much it costs privately -- I think it is brilliant that this is free on the NHS, and the students have all been marvellous.”

GPs working at the Bethnal Green Health Centre referred patients like her with relevant complaints to the weekly osteopathy clinic. Many of them, living in this predominantly non-affluent part of London, would have been unable to access private health care, and also had little or no prior knowledge of osteopathy. But if there were any initial concerns amongst the GP team about take-up these were dispelled: at the time of writing there was a four-week waiting time for osteopathy appointments. This may partly have been due to the far longer waiting lists for anyone referred for physiotherapy at the nearby Royal London Hospital.

A young woman with collapsed foot arches was one of the first patients to be referred to the new clinic.

“Osteopathy relieves some of my pain. It gives me reassurance and hope that something can be done for me and that the pain will go,” she said. “It’s very good, and I tell everyone about it, but I should keep my mouth shut, because now the clinic is so busy!”

“I’ve got three teams of students working in pairs, seeing three patient lists each week,” explained Danny Church. “But we could easily fill up a whole day’s worth of appointments.”

Indeed, a file of patient referral letters sat on the desk whilst students busied themselves making decisions about who would see individual patients as they arrived. The aim was to try and provide continuity of treatment wherever possible for returning patients, and to evenly distribute first-time patients.

“Working here means you have to take a very different approach to managing a patient’s treatment from when you work in the BSO’s general clinic,” said student John Singleton. “You can’t just tell them to come back and see you next week because the waiting list is so long, so you have to think differently about how you are going to work with and treat your patients.”

Patients included many who do not speak English, and who thus needed to come with a translator, presenting students with important challenges and experience in terms of taking medical case histories. The Bethnal Green Health Centre also serves a local Somali community, some of whom, as survivors of war, have experienced trauma such as rape or torture and who have complex psycho-social problems.

“Some of them can become quite open to talking about their experiences after a while, but it can be normal to spend a first consultation just sitting and listening and maybe holding their hands,” said Danny Church. “As osteopaths, what we do is not just about manipulation: patients are coming to us for a therapeutic intervention. You have to make your diagnosis, then it’s about doing what will help them, and that’s not always necessarily going straight into manual therapy. Sometimes giving people time to talk and acknowledging what they are saying can be very important.”

There is also a large Muslim community locally. As patients, they often needed to be treated by students of the same gender, and often had little or no prior experience of touch or manipulation in a health care setting. This meant they could initially be nervous about osteopathy.

“One older woman who was referred to us with a long history of back pain had never been touched by anyone before apart from her mother or husband,” said Danny Church. “Initially she was very wary about being treated, but we began with gentle soft tissue massage, and as she experienced pain relief she became more confident about coming to see us, and now comes for regular ‘maintenance’ appointments.”

“I’ve learned that when patients seem as if they are being ‘off’ with you, it’s often simply because they are scared!” said student Lisa Ives. “They are scared of the unknown, and they are scared of their pain and what it might mean.”

One patient treated drove for a living, but was experiencing severe neck and shoulder pain which had left him only able to work for a few hours a week.

“He was extremely sceptical about osteopathy, and initially I thought he might not commit to regular appointments,” said Danny Church. “But after a course of treatment he was able to resume his normal working pattern, and he ended up thanking the student who treated him regularly with a bunch of flowers. I think a lot of his initial resistance was due to his fear that no one would be able to help him, and that he would have to give up work altogether: he was his family’s main breadwinner.”

As the afternoon clinic progressed, the BSO students were guided by their tutor as they treated patients with a huge range of complaints. Some of them had chronic pain, and had a long history of GPs visits, hospital referrals, surgery, physiotherapy and more.

They included a middle aged women who said that six months ago she had such severe back and leg pain that she could barely get out of bed. Desperate, and on very strong painkillers, she was willing to try anything when her GP referred her for osteopathy. “The pain is still there, but it’s so much more bearable. I can go out, I’m much more active, and I’ve even started swimming and going to the gym. I think it’s great that this is available on my doorstep and in my local community.”

BSO awards gold medal for student achievement

The BSO has this year awarded its highest honour to a final year student.

As students received the results of their final exams on Friday 19 June, it was announced that Enda Butler, 35, had been awarded the BSO's Gold Medal.

This award is given to students who have demonstrated high academic achievement throughout their studies, who have contributed to the student body and the School, and who are also expected to become a future leader in the osteopathic profession.

Enda, who is from Wicklow in Ireland, was a Year Representative for his year for four years, chaired Manus Sinistra visiting guest lecturer club, and also ran revision tutorials which were extremely popular with his fellow students.

The award was proposed by the BSO's course team and unanimously supported by the exam board. This is the first time in six years that the BSO has awarded a Gold Medal to a student.

Enda Butler, BSO Gold Medal Student.

"My four years at the BSO were some of the most challenging and best of my life," said Enda. "Everybody was in the same boat and together we faced the highs and lows. To be part of it all has been wonderful and to be awarded the gold medal is an amazing honour."

"At the BSO we are all in it together, but occasionally we have a student who goes above and beyond the call of duty in supporting their year group," says Charles Hunt, BSO Principal. "It was very obvious early on that Enda was such a person: his commitment to the School and his fellow students has been outstanding. We look forward to seeing him continue to demonstrate this leadership as his osteopathic career progresses and to seeing him make his mark on the profession."

NICE includes osteopathy as a core treatment for back pain

The British School of Osteopathy (BSO) welcomes the release today (27 May 2009) of new guidelines on the treatment of back pain by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Back pain is the biggest cause of work-related absence in the UK. Steven Vogel, BSO Vice Principal for Research, Quality Assurance and Enhancement was one of the members of the NICE Guideline Development Group who worked to formulate the guidelines, which:

• For the first time recommend a national approach to back pain for NHS patients, based on treatments that have been shown to be effective including treatment typically offered by osteopaths.

• Endorse the effectiveness of manipulation, exercise and acupuncture as mainstream practice for the management of back pain.

BSO Principal Charles Hunt comments: “The BSO welcomes the NICE guidelines. We are excited to be educating osteopaths who will have an increased opportunity to contribute to health care in the public sector with the backing of the evidence-based guidelines from NICE. The guidelines also represent an endorsement of the work we currently do treating all our patients.”

The BSO is the UK’s oldest and largest school of osteopathy. It was founded in 1917, and its Patron is HRH The Princess Royal, Princess Anne. From its clinical centre in Southwark, central London the BSO offers over 40,000 patient appointments per year, including specialist in-house clinics for children, expectant mothers, people with sports injuries and those living with HIV/AIDS.

It also runs a growing portfolio of outreach community clinics, which offer free osteopathy to groups who might not otherwise be able to afford or access it. These include inter-professional, collaborative relationships with NHS primary care settings. For example, since 1999 the BSO has run an osteopathy clinic based within the East Street GP surgery in Southwark, for patients registered with the practice, who are referred for osteopathy by their doctors. The BSO also works with the Southwark-based Princess Street GP surgery. Patients are referred for treatment funded by the NHS primary care trust in which the practice is based. In January 2009 the BSO further opened a pilot osteopathy clinic for patients of the Bethnal Green Health Centre in east London.

These relationships place osteopathic care in the heart of local communities, providing opportunities for osteopaths to deliver effective care to people with back pain irrespective of their ability to pay, whilst simultaneously giving BSO students experience of working within the NHS.

For BSO comment on the NICE guidelines contact Debbie Hyde:
d.hyde@bso.ac.uk
07956 320 486

For general media information on the NICE guidelines contact Dr Tonya Gillis:
Tonya.Gillis@nice.org.uk
0845 003 7784
or visit http://www.nice.org.uk/CG88

BSO contributes to Adult Learners Week

Adult Learners Week (9-15 May 2009) saw BSO team members out and about in Southwark, explaining osteopathy and the work of the BSO.

Clinic tutor Philippa Last spoke to London South Bank University (LSBU) employees about osteopathy, the function of the human skeleton, the importance of good posture and how work routines impact on the body. Working with BSO marketing officer Deborah Hyde, she also demonstrated corrective exercises or stretches which can be performed in the workplace. This event was part of LSBU’s Learning at Work Week programme of events.

Meanwhile Walworth Bus Garage held a “health and wellbeing day” for employees, and invited a variety of local health care providers to attend. Clinic tutor Glynn Booker (pictured) joined Deborah Hyde in representing the BSO, demonstrating osteopathy and outlining the services on offer at the BSO’s clinical centre to bus drivers, engineers and other garage staff, many of whom had little or no previous knowledge of osteopathy.

The BSO is pleased to provide speakers and demonstrations of osteopathic treatment at local events. For more information, please contact Deborah Hyde at d.hyde@bso.ac.uk or 07956 320 486.

2009 Flora London Marathon

BSO tutors and students help “Team SIA” charity competitors

A team of BSO tutors and students attended the 2009 Flora London Marathon on Sunday 26 April. They continued the BSO’s annual tradition of offering free osteopathic treatment to charity runners who were raising money for the Spinal Injuries Association (SIA).

150 “Team SIA” runners took part, and 20 BSO third and fourth year osteopathy degree students provided them with post-race treatment. They were led and supervised by BSO Sports Clinic tutor Robin Lansman, assisted by BSO clinic tutors Danny Church and Ceira Kinch.

For BSO students the day provided an unparalleled chance to treat people ranging from fun runners to elite athletes who had a wide variety of injuries, ranging from heat exposure to muscle cramps and stress fractures. They were also able to benefit first-hand from Robin Lansman’s extensive knowledge of sporting injuries.

“The students who took part were a credit to the BSO, not only approaching their treatment responsibilities professionally, but also taking the opportunity to act as ambassadors in general for anyone wanting to find out more about osteopathy or the work of the BSO,” said Danny Church.

BSO outreach work: East Street clinic

Following recognition of the BSO’ s work to make osteopathy accessible to everyone, such as its recent CAM award for outstanding services to the community we here profile the work of one of its outreach clinics, which is based in the East Street GP surgery in Southwark.

“Working at the BSO’s East Street clinic has made me more aware about the patient as a whole person, someone with a life outside the osteopathy treatment room. It has made me more aware of the general population as a whole; not just the people who often come for osteopathy for back pain. At East Street, we see people with multiple health problems – they have been hurting for a long time, and there are lots of reasons why they are hurting.” David Lasnet, BSO student.

The BSO has run an osteopathy outreach clinic at the East Street GP primary care surgery since 1999. The surgery is situated just off the Old Kent Road, in an ethnically diverse area with very high rates of poverty and social exclusion. The osteopathy clinic now runs two afternoons per week due to demand, and provides free treatment for patients who have been referred by one of the five GPs working at the surgery. Fourth year BSO degree students normally work at East Street clinic for a 12-week rotation, supervised by Hilary Abbey, a senior BSO clinic tutor.

“I enjoy working with patients who would not otherwise have access to osteopathy,” she says. “East Street patients are often people who would not have the confidence to travel to hospital if they were referred for physiotherapy treatment, nor the means to pay for private osteopathic treatment. But they do feel able to get treated at their local doctor’s surgery – they know where it is, it’s just down the road, they know the receptionists and so on."

“Our patients at East Street are very often chronic pain patients with complex and challenging sets of health problems and issues. In many cases we aren’t going to be able to make them better – there won’t be any miracle cure. Our work is often about helping with the management of long-term conditions and helping to improve their quality of life.”

A mother of two arrives for her regular fortnightly appointment. Twelve years ago she was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, a gradual stiffening of the spine. Osteopathic treatment, working with the soft tissues of her back, pelvis and hips, offers her short term pain relief and helps her to continue her job as nursery nurse.

“I used to go for physiotherapy at hospital, but this is much more convenient,” she says. “It is just around the corner from where I live; I can come and see my GP and the nurse at the same time, and I can also bring my children if they have health problems. I know that osteopathy is not going to take my disease away but it helps to make it bearable."

BSO students work in pairs with East Street patients, giving 30 minute appointments from three rooms which are used at other times of the day by practice nurses, counsellors or the GPs. They gain experience of working in an NHS setting and of fitting into a co-operative health care environment, as opposed to treating a patient in the relative isolation of private practice. They are also able to use the surgery’s NHS computer system and access the medical notes of patients who have been referred to the clinic in order to record details of osteopathic diagnosis and treatment for the doctors’ information.

“It’s really helpful, not just because it gives you an insight into how GPs work and keep their records, but because you get a wider picture of your patient’s health,” says student Jemma Mitchell. “For example, we have easier access to test results, like X-rays, which are not always initially available when treating patients in the BSO’s general clinic.”

Another regular patient arrives for her appointment. She is an elderly lady who walks with the aid of a trolley, which she leans on as she pushes it in front of her. Despite living alone, she is chatty; happy to talk about how she keeps as active as possible with outings and trips. Her back is very bent, a complaint that is not reversible but she comes for work to “loosen” her neck and shoulders. For many socially excluded or isolated East Street patients, the regular social contact which their osteopathy appointments provide is as important as the treatment they receive.

“The treatment here is good – I feel relieved when I come out,” she says. “Here it is very pleasant, everyone treats you nicely. I like meeting the students – they are interested in what you are doing, and I’m interested in what they are doing.”

“You get a lot of continuity and social contact with patients, which is interesting,” says student Gregory Guillon. “It can be frustrating too, because you usually can’t be expecting to see massive changes in their conditions, but it is nice to be following them.”

One of the main aims of osteopathic treatment is to help people to adapt and compensate physically to change brought about by illness, age and injury. It may not be possible in every case to alter an underlying complaint, but improving the way the body works around it can significantly improve someone’s quality of life.

Working at the BSO’s East Street clinic prepares students for the realities of practice once they are qualified, exposing them during the course of one afternoon clinic session to a really wide variety of patients with very differing problems.

There is the grandmother caring daily for her grandson who has autism. She often has to get him, plus heavy shopping, up the many flights of stairs in the tower block where she lives. There is the young man who keeps in contact with the wider world by surfing the internet and sending emails from his laptop, sat on the bed in his bedsit, with all the implications for back problems that entails. There is the nine year old girl who comes to translate during appointments for her mother, who doesn’t speak English , and who is now receiving treatment herself. There is the woman who works processing parking fines in a local “parking shop” where she is often the brunt of customers’ anger and displeasure, and who looks forward to her regular treatments as pain and stress-relieving “me time”.

In treating such a diversity of patients, the BSO’s East Street Clinic not only provides students with invaluable clinical experience, it also helps to fulfil the BSO’s mission of making osteopathy affordable and accessible to everyone.

BSO wins CAM Award

The British School of Osteopathy (BSO) was delighted to win the Outstanding Service to the Community award at the first-ever CAM Awards, held in central London on 28 March 2009.

Organised by CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) magazine, the awards ceremony followed a one-day continuing education CAM conference on obesity and weight management at the University of Westminster. Speakers included osteopath Leon Chaitow ND, DO who is an honorary Fellow of the University. He has been a visiting lecturer at numerous chiropractic, physiotherapy, osteopathic and naturopathic schools in Europe, USA and Canada and has written and edited over 70 books.

Receiving the award and £1,000 prize money for the BSO from CAM editor Simon Martin was Tracy Davies, BSO community clinic co-ordinator.

Photo: Tracy Davies of the BSO and James McEuan of BioCare, who sponsored the CAM awards (Photo by Marcus Bevilacqua).

“On behalf of everyone at the BSO, I am delighted by this recognition of our work towards making osteopathic treatment accessible to everyone,” says Charles Hunt, BSO Principal.

From its clinical centre on Southwark Bridge Road, the BSO offers over 40,000 patient appointments per year, including specialist in-house clinics for children, expectant mothers, people with sports injuries and those living with HIV/AIDS. It also runs a growing portfolio of outreach community clinics, which offer free osteopathy to groups who might not otherwise be able to afford or access it, such as homeless people, older people in local sheltered housing projects and children with social, behavioural and emotional difficulties at a local special school.

• For more information about CAM magazine, please visit: http://www.cam-mag.com/latest.htm

BSO refurbishes its teaching premises

After opening its new clinical centre on Southwark Bridge Road in April 2008, the BSO has recently been refurbishing the second floor of its teaching premises on Borough High Street.

The majority of the second floor space accommodated patient treatment rooms prior to the opening of the BSO’s new clinical centre. It has been completely redecorated and now has two air-conditioned lecture rooms, a seminar room, a faculty office and a research room. Both lecture rooms have new furniture, audio-visual equipment and whiteboards and can accommodate up to 35 and 70 people respectively.

Photos by Mark Anderson, BSO

The second floor practice rooms have been repainted, fitted out with new blinds and will be set up with plinths and chairs.

As part of this refurbishment works a number of old, “flip-arm” chairs were donated to a school in Africa.

BSO outreach work: clinics at Darwin Court and Lucy Brown House

Following recognition of the BSO’ s work to make osteopathy accessible to everyone, such as its recent “Let’s Do It” community award, we here profile the work of two of its outreach clinics, which are aimed at providing treatment for older people.

“I’ve been coming for treatment for back pain for several weeks now. I picked up a leaflet about it from the reception desk and I’m pleased I did. I feel the benefit when I’ve had a treatment: I’m always more mobile when I come out. I’ve also introduced another lady who has been suffering with her neck. It’s a good service: it’s free, and they are a very nice, friendly team.” Annie, 82, a patient at the BSO’s outreach osteopathy clinic at Darwin Court.

Darwin Court is a large, modern centre near the Elephant and Castle offering retirement and sheltered housing. Run by the Peabody Trust, it has many facilities including a health suite, from which the BSO offers a weekly outreach osteopathy service for older people on Wednesday afternoons. The health suite offers two treatment rooms, to which the BSO has brought two plinths on which teams of students, led by senior clinical tutor Rob McCoy, treat patients like Annie, some of whom are residents at Darwin Court, and some of whom live locally and use its facilities.

As people get older, their bodies can experience a wide variety of problems such as osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, the effects of operations, falls or other accidents, circulation problems and general “wear and tear”.

Osteopathy, by treating the whole person, contributes to improving quality of life for many patients at the Darwin Court clinic. They may be referred by support workers or other agencies working with older people locally; they may learn about the clinic via leaflets or posters at Darwin Court or – as in the majority of cases – they may hear about it through word of mouth recommendations.

“It’s a really good opportunity for students to see different sorts of patients; people who might not be able to make the journey to our clinical centre,” says Rob McCoy. “Our appointment lists for the Darwin Court clinic are almost always full, so it also offers students plenty of treatment experience.”

“I think that the BSO clinics at Darwin Court and Lucy Brown House offer a great opportunity for students to make osteopathy available to a broader base of patients and to practice their skills in different environments,“ adds final year student Annastasia Fraser.

Margaret, 78, lives in her own home not far from Darwin Court, but heard about the osteopathy service via a support worker. She comes for treatment for shoulder pain.

“I was an office cleaner for 30 years,” she explains, “so in the end the wear and tear took its toll. The pain would not go away, but I came and they’ve treated me and now it is much easier. I tell everyone that I come here, and I’ve recommended it to other people.”

As part of its mission to make osteopathy accessible to the whole community, the BSO runs a fortnightly outreach clinic at Lucy Brown House, a sheltered house unit near Borough Food Market. At this clinic, patients are treated in their home settings.

“It’s a very different set-up,” explains Rob McCoy. “We have to take any equipment we need to them. You are working in someone’s home, perhaps treating them on a chair or their bed – you have to find ways to treat them that are safe for both patient and practitioner, but it proves that you can offer osteopathic treatment without a plinth and still be effective.”

One 91 year old patient at Lucy Brown House, who has been receiving osteopathic treatment for shoulder problems since the BSO started its service there, boasts that she still does all her own housework, cooking and shopping, and credits osteopathy for helping to keep her mobile.

For both the Darwin Court and Lucy Brown House clinics, students are not just involved in treating patients but also have tutorials and feedback sessions to discuss and expand on what they have experienced and learned.

“It's not always easy, but it involves thinking on your feet, adapting your techniques and treatment style to each individual’s home set-up,” sums up final year student Luke Dillon. “I’ve enjoyed the challenge of providing effective treatment in the home setting”.

Fundraising reception in aid of The British School of Osteopathy in the presence of HRH The Princess Royal, Princess Anne

Sixty guests attended a special reception at Lancaster House, central London on 27 January 2009. This was organised to raise funds for, and awareness of the BSO’s new clinical centre on Southwark Bridge Road.

Our picture shows Dr Kartar Lalvani BPharm, DSc, FRPharmS, Founder and President of Vitabiotics meeting HRH The Princess Royal. For more information and pictures from this event, please visit our Fundraising Events page.

Photo by Hugh Thompson

BSO wins “Let's Do It” community award

The BSO became the proud winner of a Let’s Do It community award on Wednesday 21 January 2009, also receiving a cheque for £500 towards the cost of a new computer for its busy clinical centre.

The annual Let’s Do It awards are run by the South London Press newspaper group, and sponsored by Barclays bank. Charities in the Lewisham, Lambeth, Southwark, Greenwich and Wandsworth boroughs of south east London are invited to enter and apply for money towards equipment and activities.

This year, at a special ceremony at Deptford Methodist Church, a total prize fund of £10,000 was shared out among 12 short-listed charities working to improve the lives of South Londoners.

The 2009 Let’s Do It award winners with Simeon London, BSO Head of Clinical Practice and Charles Hunt, BSO Principal at rear left.

From its clinical centre on Southwark Bridge Road, the BSO offers over 40,000 patient appointments per year, including specialist in-house clinics for children, expectant mothers, people with sports injuries and those living with HIV/AIDS. It also runs a growing portfolio of outreach community clinics, which offer free osteopathy to groups who might not otherwise be able to afford or access it. The BSO also enables students from a wide variety of backgrounds to study osteopathy.

“Some of our clinic computers are getting old and slow. A new one will enable us to get more patients booked in quickly and treated faster, helping us to keep even more South Londoners mobile and pain-free,” said Charles Hunt, BSO Principal and Chief Executive. “But everyone at the BSO will also be thrilled by the recognition for our work that this award represents.”

Simeon London, BSO Head of Clinical Practice and Charles Hunt, BSO Principal with Hannah Walker, Editor in Chief of the South London Press.

Photos by Hannah Jones, South London Press.

BSO outreach osteopathy: Pilot scheme launches in east London

The British School of Osteopathy (BSO) is delighted to announce the launch of a new pilot scheme to provide osteopathy for patients of the Bethnal Green Health Centre in east London.

From 14 January onwards, the BSO will run a weekly osteopathy clinic at the centre on Wednesday afternoons. Treatment will be provided in two treatment rooms by two teams of final year BSO osteopathy degree students, supervised by an experienced tutor who is a fully qualified osteopath.

The BSO runs a growing number of outreach community clinics for people who might not otherwise be able to access treatment. These also include a weekly clinic for homeless people at the Manna Day Centre at London Bridge; a clinic at the Beormund School for children with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties and treatment in their home setting for older people at the Lucy Brown House sheltered housing unit. In 2008 the BSO won a Southwark Civic Award for its outreach work.

“We are extremely pleased to have developed a relationship with the Bethnal Green Health Centre. It will give us the chance to provide osteopathic care to patients who would not normally receive it,” says Charles Hunt, BSO Principal and Chief Executive. “This is good news for the practice's patients, and it is great news for our students, as this new weekly clinic will broaden their experiences of working in different settings.”

The BSO is the largest and oldest school of osteopathy in the UK, and a registered charity. From its new clinic building – opened in April 2008 and the largest osteopathy clinical centre in Europe – it provides approximately 40,000 patient appointments each year. This includes specialist in-house clinics for children, expectant mothers, people with sports injuries and people living with HIV/AIDS.