Careers Week - Dr Alison Parish, Advanced Musculoskeletal Practitioner

Dr Alison Parish is an Advanced Musculoskeletal Practitioner for the Integrated Musculoskeletal Service. She has held the position at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust for the past five years.

Here she tells us more about her role.

Tell us how you got your role?

Dr Parish said: "My qualifications include a BSc (Hons) Physiotherapy, from the University of Southampton, PG Dip Orthopaedic Medicine, from the Society of Orthopaedic Medicine, PG Cert in Professional Practice (Research and development) from University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), Injection therapy, from UCLan and a PhD, from UCLan. I am currently undertaking a prescribing course through UCLan to extend my practice role to include prescribing. I started the course at the end of February. I have been a Physiotherapist since 2000."

What does your role involve?

Dr Parish said: "My daily role includes assessing patients face to face for musculoskeletal problems, investigating complex cases with appropriate imaging, provision of steroid and local anaesthetic injections for peripheral joints, provision of exercise programmes for patients, referrals to appropriate onward departments such as orthopaedics, pain clinic, outpatient physiotherapy and multidisciplinary team working with orthopaedics, pain clinic and physiotherapy. I also undertake service evaluation (I am currently evaluating the use of patient-reported outcome measures for shared decision making with patients)."

What have been the best bits of your role?

Dr Parish said: "The patients. They make the working day enjoyable. My colleagues. They are like a second family and an invaluable support network."

What have been the challenges of your role?

Dr Parish said: "Constant changes in IT are always a challenge, you just have to keep up to date. IMSK have been working throughout the COVID pandemic which has been challenging, but as a service we have been working hard to keep providing ongoing care for our patient group."

Life outside of work:

Dr Parish said: "I live with my husband and have three children. We enjoy walking in the lakes and cycling. I also love a good night out listening to live music with my friends (well I think I still do, not sure when the last time I went out was!)."

Top tips for people wanting to get into the profession:

Dr Parish said: "Enjoy every day of work, physio is an amazing job to have; the hare and the tortoise: “slow and steady wins the race”. It has taken me over 20 years and I have gradually added to my knowledge base. It takes time to build up skills from being a newly qualified physiotherapist; there will always be things you don’t know, don’t ever be afraid to get a textbook out or ask for advice."