HCML have gathered leading experts to report and debate the latest innovations in prevention, diagnosing, treatment and understanding the whiplash problem. This one-day forum “Stopping the UK whiplash culture”, on 2 November 2011 in London, will discuss how diagnosis, claims management, and treatment of whiplash can be improved, leading to a consensus statement on the nature of the phenomenon and how it best can be tackled. These recommendations will be addressed to the government, insurance, healthcare and the legal sector
There is a need to re-examine commonly held assumptions, and to learn from experiences in other countries. The conference will produce a position statement and recommendations for three main areas:
Diagnosis based on the bone and joint decade task force on neck pain and its associated disorders
- Does the conference support this recommendation?
- To what extent is whiplash a medical problem? Has it been allowed to become one? – Is it always ‘whiplash’?
Claims and attribution
- Does the conference agree there are limitations to the current medico legal and biomedical assessment of whiplash?
- Why have claims increased despite enhanced safety? What factors contribute to claims being initiated?
- Should all claims be managed in the same way?
Tackling the problem (treatment/rehabilitation)
- Does the conference support the Initial Medical Assessment [IMA] Professional Case Management approach using active rehab? By whom and when?
- Can whiplash be prevented or made less severe?
- Should everyone receive the same types of treatments? Can these be selected for the grade of whiplash, and delivered in an efficient and stepped manner?
Tackling the “whiplash culture”
Whiplash has become a significant problem in the UK with nearly 1200 new cases every day despite improved road and vehicle safety and fewer slight injuries reported by the police. This has led to considerable debate about what is going on in three main areas: injury prevention; the claim process (insurance, and legal); and medical management (diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation). Clearly none has tackled the problem effectively to date, alone or in combination. The purpose of this forum is to re-examine these major areas and to identify more effective ways of dealing with any type of neck pain associated with a road traffic accident.
Agenda
HCML are pleased to announce that the keynote speakers for the ‘Stop the Whiplash Culture’ seminar. All are internationally respected experts in the study, diagnosis and treatment of whiplash disorders and neck pain.
- Prof. David Cassidy – Senior Scientist, Division of Health Care and Outcomes Research Toronto Western Research Institute and the original architect of the QUBEC Joint Task Force on whiplash associated disorder
- Prof. Patrick Nee – Consultant in Emergency Medicine and Intensive Care Medicine at Whiston Hospital, Merseyside and Visiting Professor of Emergency Medicine at Liverpool John Moores University.
- Prof. Kim Burton – director of the Spinal Research unit at the University of Huddersfield – a centre of excellence for research into musculoskeletal disorders, back pain, neck pain, whiplash and upper limb disorder
- Prof. Gordon Bannister – Professor of Orthopaedic surgery at the Avon Orthopaedic Centre.
- Prof. Sir Mansel Aylward – Chair of Public Health Wales and Director of the Centre of Psychosocial and Disability research
Other significant contributions will be made by the government, legal (both claimant and defendant), the insurance sector and other research centres of excellence to give a balanced view of the problem and the ideas to resolve them.
See the full conference programme and register for this event here [1]