Letter to medical students from the ME/CFS Medical Education Campaign

We’ve begun sending this letter out to medical students’ societies across the UK.

Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is a debilitating, incurable disease which affects at least four people in a thousand. Yet medical education on ME/CFS in the UK is shockingly poor.

There have been great strides in research and clinical practice in recent years, but despite these advances medical education on ME/CFS has not progressed in the past two decades. Studies show that UK medical students are generally unaware of ME/CFS and its symptoms, and in many schools the condition is not taught at all. Unsurprisingly, research shows that UK doctors do not possess sufficient knowledge of the condition and do not feel confident treating patients with ME/CFS.

When today’s medical students become doctors they will certainly be called upon to treat these patients, and they will be legally obligated to provide evidence-based medical care in line with the NICE guidelines – yet their schools are not preparing them to do so.

Therefore we’re reaching out to medical students in the UK and asking them to ask their schools to provide high quality, up-to-date, evidence-based training on ME/CFS.

There is little excuse for schools not to provide this training. The NICE guidelines, which were updated in October 2021, outline the proper diagnosis and treatment of patients with ME/CFS. Learning resources such as e-learning modules and webinars exist; see our website at https://mecfs-med-ed.org/educational-resources-for-clinicians/. For those looking for further information, an excellent starting point would be Doctors With ME, a professional association for medical practitioners, scientists and researchers in the field of myalgic encephalomyelitis; their website is at https://doctorswith.me/.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions, or to share your experiences with ME/CFS as a medical student, good or bad. We’d particularly like to hear if there are any schools that are already doing a great job of teaching ME/CFS!

A fully referenced version of this letter can be found at https://mecfs-med-ed.org/.