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Video transcript

Kirsty: I’m here with MS nurse, Carly Gillespie, from the Southern General in Glasgow. Carly, what have you thought of the congress so far?

Carly Gillespie, MS Nurse: I think it’s been really good. I’ve learned a lot about psychological issues with MS and kind of a different way of looking at it in terms of dealing with anxiety and depression and pseudobulbar affect. I also learned a slightly different kind of take on management of fatigue using cognitive behavioural therapy, so that was something new as well. But I feel a lot of the focus is on treatments, which is good, but there’s not so much about symptom management. There has been a bit about fatigue, quite a bit about bladder symptoms, but nothing really new about it, if you know what I mean. So there is a big focus on drugs, but obviously with the changing world of MS it is all about drugs nowadays, is the thing, and we’re kind of going away from symptom management, although that is still really important to you. [laughs]

Kirsty: So yeah, there’s so many drugs coming out so I guess that’s why they’re focussing on the drugs rather than the symptoms. What have you seen that has really particularly made you excited?

Carly Gillespie: Erm… I don’t think there’s really been anything that’s stood out. There’s been nothing kind of ground-breaking. As I say, the things for me to take back that I would use, because obviously a lot of the time when I come to these things I’m looking for things that I would take back to use, and a lot of the things here are people presenting their data and their research. So I suppose the frustrating thing is it’s presenting data and research but you’re thinking, yeah, so now what do I do with that when I go back into actually the clinic environment. So as I say, I’ve taken little bits from the talks that I would take back to the MS team and maybe discuss it as a team and see how we could actually incorporate that. So things like the cognitive behavioural therapy for fatigue and the better management of bladder symptoms, the better management of anxiety, depression, those little snippets of information, you know, we would take back. But as I say, the vast majority of it has been people presenting research, which is great, but how do you then incorporate that into the clinic is the thing for you.

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