Kamrunnaher Koly

Kamrunnaher Koly is a Consultant Occupational Therapist at the Center for the Rehabilitation of the Paralysed (CRP) and a researcher with nine years experience in spinal cord injury rehabilitation. She is also a member of the ISCoS prevention committee working with the IDAP project for spinal cord injury prevention locally and internationally. Kamrunnaher’s research interests are returning to work after spinal cord injury and assistive devices. She is currently developing a multidisciplinary integrated care pathway for return to work after spinal cord injury in Bangladesh. This care pathway includes a comprehensive process of work assessment and structured intervention aiming to restore competence and a safe as well as timely return to work.

Kamrunnaher shares her experiences from the conference.

Reflecting on my experience, I was fortunate to attend the 62th International Spinal Cord Society (ISCoS) Annual Scientific Meeting in Scotland. The SRI’s support was crucial to making this trip possible for me, and this was the first time for me to join ISCoS. I attended ISCoS with the purpose of building my professional networks, seeking opportunities to collaborate around my research areas of interest, and improving my knowledge about SCI research funding resources. It provided me with a great opportunity to enrich my knowledge, foster collaboration in the area of SCI, connect with researchers around the world in my field and present my scientific paper regarding comprehensive service development for return to work after SCI.

This conference allowed me to share my expertise with the people who attended and worked in a similar field to my interests. It was a big learning platform related to SCI research. Specifically, I presented a scientific poster which was my area of practice. I have received nice feedback related to these presentations. This feedback will assist me to improve my service area. Moreover, I visited two spinal Injury units; the Queen Elizabeth National Spinal Injury Unit in Glasgow, and the Princess Royal Spinal Injury Unit Sheffield. This visit was very important for me and I got an idea about their practice settings.

I also meet people from the Stoke Mandeville spinal research charity, which promotes quality of life in people with SCI through research and funding. I got information about their research funding, which encouraged me for future research collaboration. Additionally, I had the opportunity to meet with many people working in a similar research area. It was a nice platform to meet and exchange research interests with experts from many countries. This will help me to strengthen my research capacity. There was a breakfast held for travel grant attendees, hosted by SRI was a good initiative to meet with fellows working in many countries. I was able to meet and discuss my research and career goals as well as able to meet the staff at SRI and thank them in person for their enormous support to me.

Finally, I have presented my experience in my department in-service and also with my students of Masters in Rehabilitation Science. These students are multicultural, and it was a good platform to share my achievements from the ISCoS conference.