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THE SCOTTISH RADIOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Standing Scottish Committee

Report 2000

The development of the Scottish Health Service continues apace and a definite infrastructure is now beginning to emerge. The Standing Scottish Committee, as I indicated in my report last year, continues to play a vital role in supplying information to the Scottish Health Service on matters concerned with Clinical Radiology and Clinical Oncology.

In December 1999, the annual meeting was held with the Chief Medical Officer for Scotland, Sir David Carter, who reiterated the importance of the Acute Services Review document in terms of service development and requirements together with continued support for the increase in Scottish National Training Numbers in Clinical Radiology to the tune of 5 per year for 5 years. There still remains funding issues regarding these posts as no new money is available through the Scottish Council for Postgraduate Medical Education but nevertheless Radiology is now regarded as a critical shortage specialty. New posts have also been agreed for Clinical Oncology largely due to the efforts of Dr McDougall and his colleagues.

The special advisers to the CMO remain as Dr John Reid for Clinical Radiology and Dr Hugh McDougall for Clinical Oncology and Dr McDougall also is the new Secretary of the Standing Scottish Committee.

The publication of the Clinical Radiology document on Workload, Workforce and Equipment did have some impact on the Scottish Health Service and received excellent media coverage. A further document by Dr Gerry Robertson on the Clinical Oncology data was published earlier this year and again its impact has had a significant effect. I believe the fundamental work by the Standing Scottish Committee in producing these two documents will influence the politicians sufficiently to justify further exercises of this type.

A successful Spring Millennium Meeting organised by Dr Ian Gillespie and under the auspices of the Scottish Radiological Society and the Royal College of Radiologists was held in Edinburgh and comprised both Clinical Radiology and Clinical Oncology sessions in parallel. My thanks go to the organisers of this meeting and to the high standard of the participants.

Our representation on SIGN continues as before and the importance of SIGN in setting clinical standards in Scotland and indeed within the UK is now firmly established. The involvement of our College within the SIGN methodology has important implications for the future and must be actively embraced.

The Colorectal Cancer Screening Pilot site within Scotland consisting of Grampian, Tayside and Fife has finally started to implement its programme and the implications to Radiology Departments have been identified and funded. It will be important to audit the results of this trial in order to obtain information essentially for national implementation.

Dr Peter McDermott, chairs the Clinical Directors Forum which has a place on the Standing Scottish Committee under co-option rules and is an important link to the service issues that faces many Departments of Clinical Radiology throughout Scotland. The group will shortly produce a document on waiting times which will have an important bearing on how the Clinical Standard Board for Scotland (CSBS) implement the proposed standards for various cancers and other diagnostic tests as they intend to do over the next few years. The CSBS is chaired by Lord Patel with Dr David Steel as Chief Executive and has an equivalent role in Scotland for that of CHIMP in England and Wales. It is the intention of the Board to monitor those standards introduced by themselves and by SIGN with power to invoke protocols and implementation as appropriate.

The Scottish Office has initiated many short life working groups and involvement of the Standing Scottish Committee in both the statistics review and the Scottish Telemedicine Action Forum continues. The Telemedicine initiative has significant capital funding behind it and implementation of Telemedicine including Teleradiology is certainly a national priority with development of a robust mechanism for assessment of projects.

As mentioned above. Dr Hugh McDougall from Edinburgh has taken over as Secretary of the Standing Scottish Committee and I would like to thank him for all his help during the past year. My term of office comes to an end at the Annual General Meeting this year and Donald Hadley is taking over. Donald was awarded a Personal Chair from the University of Glasgow recently and my congratulations go to him. I also know that the future of the Standing Scottish Committee is safe in his hands.

I would like to thank all the members of the Scottish Standing Committee for their hard work during my tenure as Chairman. As I have indicated before, I sincerely believe that the impact of the Standing Scottish Committee in the development of health care in Scotland is of paramount importance for our two Faculties and I am sure Donald Hadley will work hard to maintain the momentum of the Committee.

See also SSC Report 2001
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