This year’s gathering will showcase new models of care, workforce innovation and the growing role of nurses and allied health in rheumatology.
This weekend’s Australian Rheumatology Association Annual Scientific Meeting will spotlight innovation, workforce reform and new models of care in rheumatology.
Conference co-convenor and rheumatology nurse practitioner Linda Bradbury said the program would also highlight the expanding role of nurses and allied health professionals across the specialty.
Ms Bradbury, the first nurse practitioner appointed as co-convenor of the meeting, said this year’s program had been deliberately designed to reflect the changing face of rheumatology care and to encourage broader participation across the specialty.
“I feel very valued and privileged to be in this position,” she told Rheumatology Republic.
“One of the things we really wanted to do was highlight the importance of nursing and allied health and create sessions that are relevant to clinical practice,” she said.
Among the new additions is an “Innovations for Improvement” session aimed at giving clinicians a platform to present practical ideas that may not fit the traditional research abstract format.
Ms Bradbury said some nurses and allied health clinicians had been reluctant to submit conference abstracts despite leading valuable service improvements and clinical initiatives.
“They might be doing really good work that would be very useful to share, but it doesn’t quite fit the brief for research abstracts, or they don’t feel confident enough to put in an abstract,” she said.
Instead of conventional scientific submissions, presenters were invited to “submit your idea”, with a focus on clinically driven improvements and innovations in care delivery.
“It takes away that kind of aim, background, methods, results structure that sometimes ideas don’t fit into, but it’s really relevant to practice,” Ms Bradbury said.
The rapid-fire session will feature five-minute presentations from physiotherapists, nurse practitioners and other clinicians across a range of rheumatology topics.
“When we put the call out, we actually got more submissions for that than we did [for] abstracts,” Ms Bradbury said.
She said the conference would also highlight the expanding role of nurse practitioners in rheumatology care as the specialty grapples with workforce shortages and increasing demand.
“We’ve got such a lot we can offer to help with that workforce issue,” she said.
“They’re really embracing nursing and allied health, which is great.”
Related
Ms Bradbury said the evolution of rheumatology treatment over the past two decades had transformed the specialty and opened the door to new collaborative models of care.
“It’s not like it used to be where we didn’t really have many good treatments, and people were having to come into hospital and have intravenous steroids and things like that,” she said.
“We don’t, we don’t see that so much anymore, because we’ve got such good treatments.”
The ASM will also feature a collaborative workshop open to clinicians beyond the rheumatology community, alongside new digitally delivered poster tours designed to improve accessibility and audience engagement.
Mr Bradbury said the meeting reflected a broader shift within Australian rheumatology towards innovation, multidisciplinary collaboration and future workforce sustainability.
“It is a really exciting time,” she said.
“The challenge now is making sure that we’ve got sustainability for the future.”
The ARA’s ASM will be held from 16 to 19 May at the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre. For more information see here.
