From the President

Deborah Eastwood

You reap what you sow...

Now there is a phrase straight from my childhood days and what is more, I can still hear my mother’s voice reciting it and visualise my eyeballs rolling in response. While I am no gardener, I gather there are two basic ways of going about the task: either you simply sow the seeds in a random fashion and hope some take root and grow, or you spend happy hours within the protected environment of a greenhouse, planting individual seeds and nurturing them with food and water, plus a sprinkling of love. Either method, it seems to me, can work and work well.

All this year, I have been asking you to sow the seeds of the change you want to see. At the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, we have been reviewing the instruments on our trays with a significant reduction in the number of sets used per case. We have been recycling much more of the equipment we loan to patients and challenging the need for endless drapes for minor cases.

Next month, with Malue, the BOA will be launching a SOS (Sustainable Orthopaedic Systems) questionnaire to ask you more specifically about what you think should change. So, get your thinking caps on... we are looking for ideas!

Last month, I hosted the Council Dinner at the recently revamped Royal College of Surgeons of England. It was a fun night and a great opportunity to thank our past presidents, council members and training programme directors, for all that they do to support our colleagues and our profession.

On behalf of the BOA, I continue to make the most of the opportunities that come my way and recently I visited both Bangor and Stockport – the latter included a trip to Stockport County Football Club (I was a fan for a brief while, many moons ago) for Phil Turner’s retirement party. The room was full, the dance floor busy and many ‘do you remember’ anecdotes were told!

The BOA continues to promote our equaIity, diversity and inclusion agenda and several pieces of work are coming to fruition. We now know, thanks to the GOAST study, that female trainees operate on less cases and with less autonomy than their male counterparts, although we have yet to clarify what this difference means. Work on the differential attainment agenda is also making progress and we hope to have valuable information on those who are LOST from surgical training to present at Congress.

We are also working hard to broaden our base of engagement with you, our members. Ideas on widening the eligibility criteria for Trustee positions will be presented to you at the AGM in Liverpool. We have also updated the job descriptions for the Executive roles and will be suggesting changes to the voting regulations too.

Trauma and Orthopaedics continues to own a large chunk of the NHS waiting list. We remain saddened by the perception that most patients with orthopaedic problems can be managed in the community without the input of surgeons – the reality is that the surgeon is a valuable member of the team, whether or not the intervention delivered is a surgical procedure or explanation and reassurance. The ORTHOPOD data confirmed significant variation in trauma workloads from one trust to the next and such variation in practice will need to be challenged.

We are beginning to make our mark on the political scene, and hope that our ideas will be listened to and will take root. Perhaps one day soon we will be able to reap the harvest of the seeds planted now (with apologies to RL Stevenson for the misquote!).