In the space of six weeks, we have had an announcement by Lord O’ Shaughnessy giving a date – April 2019 – for Medical Examiner implementation, along with a statement from Jeremy Hunt on investigation of stillbirths by the newly-formed Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch. These reflect a huge amount of behind-the-scenes work by this College and others.
Our firm focus on the value of thorough and compassionate investigation of deaths is reflected in this second series of articles on Learning from the Deceased (from p6). There are further articles on forensics, in both human and veterinary practice, and a point of view piece from the Chief Coroner, Mark Lucraft. This will, I hope, generate some correspondence.
The articles on investigation of perinatal death present a wonderful picture of current pathological practice as well as the family view as represented by Francine Bates of the Lullaby Trust, a charity that supports families who have had a stillbirth or perinatal death. It is a reminder that compassion has to sit alongside rigour in the analysis of why a baby has died.
Naturally, we have devoted considerable space to reports of our very successful National Pathology Week, which had the theme ‘Pathology in the Community’. We ran several local events in the borough of Tower Hamlets, the site of both our new College and our new President’s place of work.
There was, of course, a huge amount of activity across the UK. The reports make fun reading (p21–27). We continue to try to be visible to undergraduates, through the essay competition and Pathology Summer School. The essay theme this year was ‘IT in Pathology’ with 20 high-quality entries. Read the winning essay on p28. The Pathology Summer School was again a great success with reports from enthusiastic attendees featuring on p29.
In the middle of National Pathology Week, we held a very successful International Pathology Day, this time by webinar. You will be impressed by the scope of what our International team achieves (p45).
We’ve included, as an experiment, a ‘Research Round-up’ (p37), with a report on the INTERVAL blood donor trial recently published in The Lancet. Although The Bulletin can’t cover every key paper to which our Fellows have contributed, we hope that with the help of the research committee, we can draw members’ attention to key trials and studies of broad interest.
There is a good deal of College news at the moment, with profiles of the new Vice-Presidents and Registrar (p39), and an update on RCPath Consulting (p40). Essential reading is Peter Furness’s article ‘What’s in a Name?’. With characteristic humour, he draws attention to the serious professional issue of misuse of titles, and takes a light-hearted poke at a local edict not to use them at all (p41). Finally, I’m sure you’ll join me in congratulating Rachael Liebmann on her well-deserved College medal (citation on p62).
In my previous editorial, I trailed the forthcoming launch of a new open access publishing platform for the College. Through a collaboration with the Faculty of 1000, we have established the RCPath Gateway. Tim Helliwell provides details on p38.
The April issue of The Bulletin will bring together current thinking on workforce planning along with the findings of the histo/cellular pathology survey. At the College we are extremely grateful to those who took part in the survey.
Author(s)
