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Summer 2022 heatwave, record temperature of 40C here in UK. Most of the rehabilitation, especially of the elderly patients on the ward had to be cancelled over a period of 2 weeks because patients could not cope with the heat. Disruption in service and patients care including delayed recovery and prolonged hospital staying. It felt surreal!

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Devon based Trusts (Plymouth & Exeter) have established a rewards scheme to encourage staff to reduce-reuse-recycle, travel sustainably, improve health and wellbeing and upload activities to a leaders board to share good practice and motivate and enable colleagues to get involved.

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To register your account to the Choosing Greener programme, please follow the below steps: 1. Click the 'Register' button 2. Enter your 3. Click 'Register' and select your department and group [email protected] 4. Enter your personal details and create a password 5. Confirm your age and agree to the terms and conditions 6.

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I'm Kelly and I have MS. In 2022 the prolonged heatwaves had a negative impact on me. I was very fatigued, it stopped all my muscles working. Being fatigued meant that I couldn't exercise. I also wasn't able to sleep which impacted on my ability to recharge and recover. The heat was so prolonged that I had no time to recover so I was always running on empty. This meant that my walking ability was terrible and my foot drop and hip stability deteriorated. It's taken me 12 months to get 50 % recovered from this.

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Summer 2022 in the UK saw yet another summer of unprecedented temperatures. Many will be familiar with the news story of Guys & St Thomas’s hospital, a central London teaching Trust whose two main IT servers went into literal meltdown, unable to adapt to the increasing temperatures.

This affected every area of clinical care, from cancelled surgeries and procedures in the acute sites, to an inability to access basic patient demographics or notes in the community.

This in turn meant our community Paediatric physios (and numerous other clinical staff groups) could not visit patients at home as planned for essential therapy (and also could not access numbers to warn patients!). We had no idea who was turning up to outpatient appointments and with no access to medical records we could not access key medical information or safeguarding alerts. Our record keeping had to be done on word documents on our personal computers as there was initially no access to shared drives, so we had no way of seeing other HCP entries who were working with very vulnerable families.

This doesn’t even scratch the surface of the health impacts the heatwaves had on our vulnerable patients, and the therapy they missed resultantly.

The IT systems were not fully remedied for months, and the repercussions of migrating data and missing data are inevitably still being felt but not talked about widely.

The environmental degradation and biodiversity crises are a public health crisis. People and patients are suffering, and the physiotherapy profession is unable to deliver the care required to the people who need it most as a result.

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The overwhelming threat of the climate crisis has led me to take action both as an individual and in my work as a physio. Through this I have connected with a special group of other physio professionals who have similar concerns to me. Together we have built a supportive community from which I gain strength, reassurance and motivation to create positive change and promote sustainable physiotherapy practice in my workplace. Because of this community I feel more confident to have conversations with colleagues about the climate crisis. Also on the days I feel less hopeful I know there will always be someone to share my feelings with and I can be heard and understood.

This moving song "Unite to Survive" (track 8) reminds me of the supportive community I have found 💚💙💚 I first heard it performed live when I was protesting for climate action with other physios in Bath.

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Just successfully crowdfunded upcoming album Anthems For Change. Pre-order at Kimwei.com for Dec 2023 release and/or listen to/purchase DRAFTS here.

Where is the soundtrack for the climate revolution? We believe it is down to us all to make it. Singer-songwriter and Grand Bard of Exeter, Kimwei (Vocals/Guitar) teams up with folk musicians Christopher Dance (Vocals/Fiddle), Lisa Rowe (Vocals/Fiddle) and Anita Clarinet (Clarinet/Sax/Whistle) to make the songs of tomorrow's history: music that births change - a lush landscape of vocal harmonies, guitar, strings and woodwind to surround and transform you.

We are a band who have been brought together by our deep love of music, our deep love for the planet, for all who live on it, and for justice and peace.

We're adding songs all the time. This is a very different album to any I've made before because we're making music for social change. So, I'm writing songs for specific campaigns as they come, (and we're recording them as a band) so that they can be part of those campaigns that are going on now (e.g. Extinction Rebellion UK Unite To Survive season, Totnes Right to Roam) instead of recording songs and keeping them back until a final release date.

Music for protest doesn't pay (financially), so, soon we're going to run out of resources to keep on making these songs and going out to perform them on the street at demos/protest events/protestivals. So we've launched a crowdfunder (above) for the full album and more and we'll need your help. tinyurl.com/KimweiCrowdfunder <3 which is live till 21st Sept!

Please spread the word about these songs - share if a song touches you, to support the campaigns we're singing about. Love & Rage.

released January 19, 2023

All songs written and performed by Kimwei McCarthy
Photo credit: Fern Leigh Albert

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Anthems For Change (Drafts) by Kimwei, released 19 January 2023 1. The Stars Are For Everyone - band draft in rehearsal room 2. Rebel For Life - band draft in studio 3. Deep and Awake - solo draft in studio 4. Unite To Survive - band draft in studio 5.

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I work as a physio in a regional spinal cord injury rehabilitation centre. Patients can come from anywhere in the whole of the south west of England and stay with us for months and months to rehabilitate from their injury before discharging into the community. It is often difficult for families and friends to visit regularly due to the significant journey times for some. Recently the family of one patient have really struggled with their journey from the Isle of Wight due to heavy flooding. This has increased their journey times significantly but more importantly has increased the stress and hassle associated with a visit, at an already very difficult time. The anxiety around this travel disruption for both the family and patient are evident in their moods when I see them for treatment. With more and more extreme weather conditions predicted as climate change progresses I wonder how this will affect patients rehabilitation and how we deliver our services?

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Island sees widespread flooding after heavy rain

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An onslaught of heavy rain left roads impassable and halted trains on the Isle of Wight.

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On my final placement of my physiotherapy qualification I was working in a hyper acute stroke unit. During the six weeks I spent there the UK experienced record breaking high temperatures. It was scary to think that the strokes our patients were being admitted with, may have been caused by the heatwave. I struggled to work in the temperatures, feeling completely wiped out in a building not designed to cope with such heat. There were even some days when we weren't allowed to do any therapy with the patients because the risks of undertaking activity in the high temperatures outweighed the benefit. I had a brilliant time on this placement, but was definitely glad to no longer have to persevere working in the heat. I felt bad for my educators who had to keep on going and manage as best they could for the rest of the summer...

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For the first time on record temperatures in the UK have exceeded 40°C.

The first ever Red Extreme Heat warning is still in place across parts of England together with a larger Amber Extreme heat warning, covering much of England, Wales and southern Scotland. With the extreme heat today comes the risk of thunderstorms,particularly in parts of the southwest today and, later, the northeast of England. A Yellow Thunderstorm Warning has been issued for parts of the Southeast tomorrow.

Met Office Chief Meteorologist Neil Armstrong, said "We are continuing to see exceptional temperatures in the UK today and it is important people plan for the heat and consider changing their routines. This level of heat can have adverse health effects."

The step up in warning level to red last week complemented the increase in the current Heat Health Warning to Level 4 for England by the UK Health Security Agency.

You can find the latest forecast on our  website, by following us on  Twitter and  Facebook, as well as on our  mobile app which is available for iPhone from the  App store and for Android from the  Google Play store. Keep track of current weather warnings on the  weather warning page.

A Level 4 UK Health Security Agency Heat Health Alert has been issued for Monday and Tuesday. This is level of alert is used when a heatwave is so severe and/or prolonged that its effects extend outside the health and social care system. At this level, illness may occur among the fit and healthy, and not just in high-risk groups.

"By making just small changes indoors or in the garden you can have a big impact on our water consumption. Our Water's Worth Saving campaign has a host of helpful top-tips showing the simple things we can all do to save this precious resource, so it remains readily available now and in the future."

Find out more about driving in hot weather with National Highways.

Check the latest weather forecast and temperature warnings - you can find these on TV, radio, mobile app or website.

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For the first time on record temperatures in the UK have exceeded 40°C.