As part of our Day in the Life series of colleague stories, we’re introducing you to Dr. Alan Sweeney, a Sport and Exercise Medicine Consultant for Connect Health in Wolverhampton. Here Alan tells us more about a day in his life at Connect…
Tell us briefly about your professional background:
My name is Dr. Alan Sweeney, a Sport and Exercise Medicine Consultant for Connect Health Wolverhampton, with over 15 years of experience in the NHS. I also work as one of the doctors for Wolverhampton Wanderers FC. During these 15 years, I have accumulated postgraduate diplomas in Sport & Exercise Medicine, Adult Medicine and MSK Ultrasound.
How long have you been in Connect Health and what attracted you to the role?
I have worked for Connect Health in Wolverhampton since March 2023. Having previously worked as a consultant in the NHS, I was attracted to the forward thinking and innovative attitude of Connect. Ideas and suggestions are actively encouraged, listened to, and taken seriously. Creating even small changes in the NHS is notoriously difficult, which often felt claustrophobic and frustrating.
The ethos within Connect of progressive ideas is something that I wanted to be part of.
What does a typical day in Connect Health entail?
The day typically starts with triaging referrals that have been received from primary care and responding to emails. Then I have a morning session and an afternoon session, made up of new patients of which this is their first contact and follow up patients whom I have seen before.
A large part of my role is to deliver ultrasound guided steroid injections to joints and targeted structures (hip joints, 1st CMC joints, Morton’s Neuroma, etc.) plus providing second opinions on cases which have already been seen by one of our Advanced Practice clinicians in service.
Once a week, we have a multi-disciplinary team (MDT) meeting, discussing difficult cases and troubleshooting any clinical issues that have popped up during the previous week. This often includes medical advice about patients, on various medications and with chronic illnesses, who may be presenting with a medical issue masquerading as musculoskeletal complaints.
Has your role changed/develop since joining Connect? How have you adapted?
My role has developed in the sense of providing more mentorship to our Advanced Practice clinicians, particularly those completing MSc’s and Diplomas who need supervision for ultrasound cases or documented discussion of cases as part of their course.
What influence/change have you brought within your role?
The addition of in-house ultrasound guided injections has changed a lot of the patient pathways and has led to patients being seen sooner. For example, all hip joint injections and most small joint injections (1st CMC joint, 1st MTP joint, etc.) were traditionally referred to Orthopaedics which meant many months of waiting for the patient. Now, the Advanced Practice clinicians have the ability to simply refer them into my clinic and I can inject them instead. In most cases, these patients can therefore be managed quicker and more efficiently within Connect and often never need to be referred to secondary care at all. This benefits the patient and supports the local NHS trust manage their elective waiting lists.
I also hope that having witnessed the benefit of ultrasound guided injections in community MSK, some physios may be inspired to gain qualifications in this area themselves one day.
To find out more about working at Connect Health, contact people@connecthealth.co.uk.
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