From The President

To rally or to be rallied

Bob Handley

Back to normal? I don’t think so. Congress will as usual be an opportunity to update knowledge and meet friends and this year has what is now the added novelty of speaking without having to remember to unmute. However, this year there is also the burden of events. The pandemic has exposed the strengths and frailties of our health service. In T&O we have to continue to tackle our acute work whilst retaking the lost ground of the elective front. This is no small task and requires leadership, is it for us to do the rallying or do we wait to be rallied?

"Caring for patients, supporting surgeons” is never a bad foundation when considering how to approach a T&O problem from a BOA perspective, and I believe it is now more pertinent than ever. To care for patients we surgeons do need support. In his article Chris Colton describes T&O as “scientific art”, others label it a “craft specialty”, whatever the terminology it is a fact that for patients to benefit from modern T&O surgery we need sufficient trained hands to be available as well as sufficient facilities, allied professionals and time. The necessary support and the time will largely be dictated by others, it is the availability of surgical workforce which is our direct concern. Efficiency and innovation will gain us some ground but it is fanciful to believe stemming the rising tide of the waiting lists can be achieved without a sustained increase in hard work. So just who will do all this work? It takes little imagination to see that there is the potential for problems at each stage of the Consultant career pathway. Will those of us in the current surgical workforce be prepared to put in more hours, or will pension uncertainty and work/life balance pressures discourage us? Will there be a welcome increase in the size of our workforce from an enthusiastic cohort of newly CCT’d trainees, or will the decrease in logbook cases delay the completion of their training? Will the pandemic lead the more senior among us to delay or accelerate our retirement plans? In an attempt to better understand each of these and what impending storm may await us, we have recently surveyed BOA members.

So to rally or to be rallied? I think both are needed. I shall aim to stand behind the podium at Congress intending to display all the gravitas of Ian McKellen rousing Middle Earth, and we all need to be positive with our own teams. However, our Politicians, National NHS leaders and our Trusts need to be aware that they not only need to provide material sustenance for the health system but also rally the ‘Hearts and Minds’ of their workforce of which we with our ‘craft speciality’ hands are a vital component. The results of the BOA members survey will be presented at Congress. These results will inform both us and others to aid in plotting a course out of the backlog which hangs over us.

Whoever is rallying, communication and openness are necessary to make us all feel involved and empowered. How to best maintain good communication is a challenge, but a glance around any theatre coffee room leads me to believe that the best route to anyone’s mind is through their phone; it seems more likely a message will be received if it arrives electronically rather than by actually speaking. Enter the new BOA App; which is now no longer confined to the Congress week alone but an ever present portal to updates, the website and more. Install it on your front page.

It has been an unusual year to be BOA President, but a rewarding one. The desire of colleagues in the workplace and the committee zooms to do their best for patients is undimmed. To deliver on this we need not just material things, but also to nurture group morale and have our group morale nurtured. On reading the contents of this edition of JTO it is quite apparent that we are an exemplary group of which to be member. If only in the last year I had ever met anyone to receive the BOA Presidential medal of office I would have worn it with great pride. Thank you.