STEP campaign<\/a> is now widely known and earlier this month received a welcome endorsement\u00a0in the form of a joint report with the Patient’s Association. ‘A Time to Act’ highlighted what we all\u00a0know. ‘A&E’ is a powerful brand that draws patients – confident of its availability (24\/7), its quality\u00a0(high satisfaction levels) and accessibility (just follow the road signs). The College argues that
\nEmergency Medicine is only one component of what an ‘A&E’ should provide.<\/p>\nThe Emergency\u00a0Department must be reinforced by other key services such as out of hours primary care, mental\u00a0health teams, district nursing services and other key components of urgent care.<\/p>\n
I hope by now that the NHS England report ‘Safer, Faster, Better’ will have been published. We\u00a0expect it to be published by the end of June and having been consulted on its contents we have\u00a0agreed to co-badge and endorse the guidance. It is a very useful guide to Trusts and CCGs. Not\u00a0surprisingly it restates most of the conclusions in the RCEM report published last year, entitled\u00a0‘Prescribing the Remedy’!<\/p>\n
The gap between winning an argument and changing the behaviour and decisions of others is\u00a0without doubt the most difficult to bridge. It can only be done by repetition, stamina and\u00a0engagement. I appreciate that for Fellows and Members this can sometimes be seen as ‘more of\u00a0the same’. However to the people and organisations we need to influence it means ever fewer
\nreasons to have not heard, not understood or not acted upon our cogent, well informed and clearly\u00a0articulated agenda.<\/p>\n
September will be Party Conference season and we will ensure we continue to press our case. It\u00a0will also be our own Scientific Conference – and Manchester promises to be a great showcase for\u00a0both the breadth and depth of emergency medicine. Our specialty and UK EM continues to prosper\u00a0despite the myriad challenges. The EMJ has increased its circulation, has the highest social media
\nprofile of any BMJ publication and a steadily rising impact factor. Within Europe we have the most\u00a0well established and academically mature system of emergency medicine training. This August will\u00a0see the highest ever number of EM trainees in post and the prospects for the next two years are of\u00a0even greater numbers.<\/p>\n
The key challenge therefore is to ensure we retain all those that we train. Attrition wastes taxpayers\u00a0money, diminishes patient care and overburdens colleagues. This simple, inescapable logic will\u00a0continue to inform our conversations with the BMA and NHS Employers. They must be held to\u00a0account over this – resource wastage cannot be accepted, particularly in the current financial\u00a0climate.<\/p>\n
The BMA must recognise that it has said too little, too softly when it comes to high frequency out of\u00a0hours specialties. NHS Employers must recognise that an ED locum spend of \u00a3500 million in the\u00a0last three years alone, represents appalling value for money; whilst headlines reporting the issue\u00a0simply add insult to injury to trainees and consultants alike.<\/p>\n
I would urge all EM members of the BMA to write to the Chair of Council of the BMA to make these\u00a0points. A template for the letter is available on the RCEM website – all you need to do is print it off,\u00a0sign and post it – it is imperative we make our voice heard and there is no more powerful voice than\u00a0the \u2018troops on the frontline\u2019.<\/p>\n
The negotiations around new contracts are beginning again in earnest. Next week I will be meeting\u00a0with Lord Prior – erstwhile chairman of the CQC and now Parliamentary Under Secretary of State\u00a0for Health – whose remit includes the new contracts. The College is not a trades union but our\u00a0Charter charges us to \u2018raise standards in emergency care\u2019. This can only be done with a work force\u00a0that is well trained, stable and sufficient to the task. I make no apologies therefore in arguing for\u00a0equitable terms of employment.<\/p>\n
Dr Cliff Mann FRCEM FRCP
\nPresident
\nThe Royal College of Emergency Medicine
\n@RCEMPresident<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"August 2015 – August, and for some the prospect of a well deserved holiday; whilst for others the sense of d\u00e9j\u00e0\u00a0vu, as we explain the bones of the carpus, ‘reveal’ the secret of good medicine is in taking the\u00a0history and pointing out that the discovery of CRP is not on a par with the discovery of penicillin!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":554,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[3,76],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/president.rcem.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/president.rcem.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/president.rcem.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/president.rcem.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/president.rcem.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/president.rcem.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":809,"href":"http:\/\/president.rcem.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions\/809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/president.rcem.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/president.rcem.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/president.rcem.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/president.rcem.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}