Working In The Community



The Gut Trust works with many national organisations.

These include CORE, the digestive disease charity, NICE, the IMAGE project.

A very significant gastroenterology research project funded by the Health Foundation, and organisations such as the Primary Care Society for Gastroenterology.

We're also very interested in the idea of promoting self management as a tool for people with chronic illnesses, and this means being involved with the NHS and with projects like QISMET - the Quality Institute for Self Management Education and Training. We work in close conjunction with other charities interested in gastroenterology, and the chairs and chief execs of all the charities in the field keep in close touch.

JCN

The Gut Trust was invited by The Journal of Community Nursing magazine to attend a series of training events that they organise annually. These events are usually attended by between 100 & 150 members of the nursing profession. This gave us the opportunity to speak to them face to face about the work of the Gut Trust, answer any questions they may have and give them some written information to take back to their workplace.

In 2008 staff attended JCN training events in the following locations:
  • Blackpool
  • Stoke on Trent
  • Leeds
  • Bristol
  • Torquay
  • Durham
  • Peterborough
  • Ashford
  • Manchester
  • Sheffield
  • Birmingham
In 2009 staff will attend JCN training events in the following locations:
  • Blackpool
  • Stoke on Trent
  • Bradford
  • Peterborough
  • Durham
  • Sheffield
  • Manchester
  • Birmingham
Even though some of the venues are the same as the previous year the nursing staff attending are different.

BSG

We also attend the annual meeting of the British Society of Gastroenterologists which is held in March each year and alternates between Birmingham & Glasgow. The 2009 meeting is booked for March 23rd to 26th at the Scottish Exhibition & Conference Centre, Glasgow. Again it gives us the opportunity to promote the charity to a large range of medical professionals.

The idea behind doing these kind of events is that if we make the medical staff aware that we exist then they will pass the information on to their patients.

Outreach Work

In 2008 staff also attended health awareness events organized by NH Customs & Excise (Leeds), The Northern Ireland Office (London), Yakult (London) and for a few weeks we had a stall in Leeds market as part of their Health Awareness campaign.