A Patient's Plan to Educate Medical Students on ME/CFS

[Hip]

ME/CFS patient Ryan Prior wants to take on the medical establishments and educate medical students about chronic fatigue syndrome.

This is such a damn good idea! The ME/CFS community should have thought about this earlier!

Everyone knows that students are much more open minded and educable, compared to professionals who have been working for decades.

If you want to make a real impact on the future, this is always best achieved by educating the next generation.


This medical student education project could be replicated in every city, and in every university which has a medical school, by a team of ME/CFS patients who live locally in that city or near that medical school.

Even if medical students were given just say a total of 10 hours worth of lectures on ME/CFS at some point within their five year long medical degree, this would make a huge difference.

Patient's Plan to Educate Doctors on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A young man is taking on the medical establishment with a plan to educate medical students about the devastating disease Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, also known as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, that is little or not understood at all by most doctors. Ryan Prior, 24, has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which affects about 1 million Americans and 17 million people around the world.

Prior, accompanied by infectious disease researcher Dr. Andreas Kogelnik, will discuss his plan to tackle the lack of understanding about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome among doctors by embedding medical school students for 10 weeks with specialists. They will also discuss the pioneering work being done on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at Kogelnik's Open Medicine Institute in Mountain View, CA.

When: January 24, 2014, 9 a.m.

Where: The National Press Club, 529 14th St., NW, Washington, DC 20045

Speakers: Dr. Andreas Kogelnik, director, the Open Medicine Institute, Mountain View, CA, expert on molecular medicine and chronic disease, and supporter of the medical internship program for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Ryan Prior, patient and creator of the Blue Ribbon Foundation, based in Atlanta, GA, which will manage and coordinate the medical intern program.

Facilitator: Llewellyn King, executive producer and host,"White House Chronicle" on PBS and columnist, Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Background: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome has no cure, succumbs to no drug, and is hard to diagnose because there are no biological markers in blood or urine. About twice as many women as men are stricken with the disease, and they tend to be more severely incapacitated.

Victims suffer a variety of awful symptoms including severe declines in cognitive function, fatigue that is not abated by sleep, joint pain, and the inability to undertake any physical activity without collapsing afterwards. Many victims are often bedridden in tomb-like rooms – even in bedroom closets -- because of sensitivity to sound and light.

For most sufferers, it is a disease that dictates bare existence for the rest of life.

Even among physicians, there is a critical lack of knowledge about the disease, according to Kogelnik. "The parallels of the current state of CFS to the early days of misunderstanding around HIV are incredible," he said.

Contact: For more information, call Llewellyn King at (202) 441-2702. To arrange a broadcast interview with either Ryan Prior or Dr. Andreas Kogelnik, e-mail Llewellyn King atlking@kingpublishing.com

SOURCE Open Medicine Foundation

 

[SickOfSickness]

Great having those 3 team up!

 

[taniaaust1]

We should be campaigning about lack of medical school teaching on ME/CFS at medical schools. Till its not being buried by not even being taught about, change is far less likely to happen any time soon.

 

[Denise]

We should be campaigning about lack of medical school teaching on ME/CFS at medical schools. Till its not being buried by not even being taught about, change is far less likely to happen any time soon.

It definitely needs to be taught --- but how to decide what is taught and who develops the material?

 

[lansbergen]

It definitely needs to be taught --- but how to decide what is taught and who develops the material?

Good question

 

[alex3619]

It definitely needs to be taught --- but how to decide what is taught and who develops the material?

Recently a section in a textbook was written by Peter White. Care to guess what it was about? There is a thread on it here somewhere. We need careful scientific presentations, or we get babble.

 

[Ecoclimber]

This is what CAA should have been working on ten years ago with the CDC and the NIH!!!