This week….

[Anonymous]

This week I was delighted to receive an email from Julie informing me that I had been awarded an Academic Fellowship for my Paper on frontal plane motion in a normal population (the title of the Paper is somewhat less snappy, as you’ll see when it’s finally published).

The Paper was based on biomedical engineering research I carried out at Durham University as a post-grad student between 1995-2002. The University very kindly awarded me a research MSc for that, presented by Sir Peter Ustinov – he presented 3000 parchments of one sort or another at that graduation week, and sadly died later that same year. I regard my Academic Fellowship as having equal importance to my MSc, and I’m grateful to the IOCP for giving me the opportunity to publish what I consider to be an important piece of work.

Clinical excellence though, is what makes the IOCP stand out, in particular the groundbreaking injection therapy work being carried out by Martin Harvey and Team, with the backing of the IOCP Medicines Committee.

I had some experience of Institute teaching many years ago (1975) when I did my local anaesthetics training. Those of us who had successfully completed a three year fulltime chiropody course were deemed to have enough background knowledge to move straight into practical work. We spent one afternoon a week for seven weeks at a local NHS establishement (Ben – to my shame I cannot remember his second name) was Head of Service, and organised the course through the Institute.
Our syllabus consisted of learning the neurological anatomy, safe dosage, difference between the various anaesthetics and the like, and giving each other injections (which was standard practice in those days. I remember we were VERY careful to give our twin a painless injection! We were examined on infiltrations, digital blocks, ankle blocks, and popliteal (knee) blocks, by the two Anaesthetists who taught the course. Very thorough!

I mention this in passing, that a certain professional body who (still) claim to look after the profession were doing their own teaching of local anaesthesia at that time, through their Branches mostly. My business partner went this route. It was (mostly) “quickie”, designed to get as many people up to speed as possible. You could qualify if you were able to numb a big toe. The Institute course was thorough, and thoroughly enjoyable.

If Ben is still around (he may be) – thank you.

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