Video: Knock on Wood| Webinar: ACR/CHEST ILD Guidelines in Practice
fa-facebookfa-linkedinfa-youtube-playfa-rss

An official publication of the ACR and the ARP serving rheumatologists and rheumatology professionals

  • Conditions
    • Axial Spondyloarthritis
    • Gout and Crystalline Arthritis
    • Myositis
    • Osteoarthritis and Bone Disorders
    • Pain Syndromes
    • Pediatric Conditions
    • Psoriatic Arthritis
    • Rheumatoid Arthritis
    • Sjögren’s Disease
    • Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
    • Systemic Sclerosis
    • Vasculitis
    • Other Rheumatic Conditions
  • FocusRheum
    • ANCA-Associated Vasculitis
    • Axial Spondyloarthritis
    • Gout
    • Lupus Nephritis
    • Psoriatic Arthritis
    • Rheumatoid Arthritis
    • Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
  • Guidance
    • Clinical Criteria/Guidelines
    • Ethics
    • Legal Updates
    • Legislation & Advocacy
    • Meeting Reports
      • ACR Convergence
      • Other ACR meetings
      • EULAR/Other
    • Research Rheum
  • Drug Updates
    • Analgesics
    • Biologics/DMARDs
  • Practice Support
    • Billing/Coding
    • EMRs
    • Facility
    • Insurance
    • QA/QI
    • Technology
    • Workforce
  • Opinion
    • Patient Perspective
    • Profiles
    • Rheuminations
      • Video
    • Speak Out Rheum
  • Career
    • ACR ExamRheum
    • Awards
    • Career Development
  • ACR
    • ACR Home
    • ACR Convergence
    • ACR Guidelines
    • Journals
      • ACR Open Rheumatology
      • Arthritis & Rheumatology
      • Arthritis Care & Research
    • From the College
    • Events/CME
    • President’s Perspective
  • Search

Rheumatology’s Divergent Thinkers

Gretchen Henkel  |  Issue: February 2008  |  February 1, 2008

Pamela Richards, who lives in Bristol, U.K., and is the current chair of OMERACT’s Patient Panel, distinctly recalls her reactions when she attended her first OMERACT conference. “It was quite an amazing experience just to be with so many people who were researching the condition I had, and interested in the nitty-gritty of it,” she says. “My previous experience with doctors is that they would focus on the things they could do, but all of the other things were irrelevant. Some of the things I experienced were not in their textbooks and were not validated as being part of RA. Also, my experience of living with the condition every day had not been put to good use.” That all changed, says Ms. Richards, when she attended OMERACT 7, held in Monterey Bay, Calif.

As with many others who have participated in the OMERACT process, Ms. Richards has found stimulation to initiate other projects. “My passion is to focus on enabling other patients to become individual research partners,” she says. “Not everyone can attend OMERACT. However, people around the world can have the same kind of purpose by participating in their own area, not just as ‘token patients,’ but in a very positive way [e.g., to help structure protocols for clinical trials].”

ad goes here:advert-1
ADVERTISEMENT
SCROLL TO CONTINUE

To that end, Richards (together with Maarten de Wit from The Netherlands) was instrumental in formulating an OMERACT glossary targeted for patient representatives to familiarize them with the OMERACT process. She has also co-produced a three-hour patient-training workshop, which will debut at EULAR in June. She anticipates helping to foster patient groups such as the one connected with Dr. Kirwan’s department at Bristol, and credits her experiences with OMERACT as the catalyst for her activism. “These people are incredible academics, but they also recognize that patients are people. They see us [the patient representatives] as people they can work with, not just patients they treat.”—G.H.

Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 | Single Page
Share: 

Filed under:Meeting ReportsPractice Support Tagged with:clinical trialsInternationalmeasuresOMERACTOutcome Measures in RheumatologyOutcomes

Related Articles

    Omeract How to Get into the “Act”

    April 1, 2010

    Meet this international organization that focuses on rheumatology outcome measures

    Patients Add Power to Research Initiatives

    October 7, 2011

    A look at how OMERACT involves people with rheumatic disease in its studies

    Patient-Centered Care Model for RA Flares Could Improve Self-Management of Symptoms

    December 16, 2015

    A recent trend to incorporate patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in clinical research, and ultimately clinical practice, is a response to the need to better measure and treat what patients truly care about, and adapt to the changing healthcare environment, which increasingly includes patient satisfaction as a key metric for overall quality of care, a metric tied…

    New Criteria for RA Remission

    February 12, 2011

    ACR and EULAR update 1981 criteria to reflect modern treatment options

  • About Us
  • Meet the Editors
  • Issue Archives
  • Contribute
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
fa-facebookfa-linkedinfa-youtube-playfa-rss
  • Copyright © 2025 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial technologies or similar technologies. ISSN 1931-3268 (print). ISSN 1931-3209 (online).
  • DEI Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Cookie Preferences