New Post Graduate Tutor Appointed

Mr. Walford Gillison has, with reluctance, decided to relinquish his position as Postgraduate Tutor.  Mr. Gillison has given the Post Graduate movement six years of his valuable time, during which period the duties have become considerably more onerous, and involved him latterly in considerable financial responsibilities. We thank him for his hard work on our behalf.

As from 1 st October 1992, the new Post Graduate tutor will be Dr. Mark Mantle. Dr Mantle was born and brought up in Staffordshire. After obtaining d physiology degree at Oxford he completed his medical training at St. Bartholemews Hospital, graduating in 1981. Having received no formal undergraduate radiology teaching, his first real exposure to modern radiology came during his surgical house job in Shrewsbury , and he decided then to pursue a career in diagnostic imaging. As required for accreditation by the Royal College of Radiologists, he spent some time in various SHO posts including Accident and Emergency, General Medicine and Neurology, and at the end of this period passed the MRCP. His specialist radiology training started in 1985 as a Registrar, and subsequently as Senior Registrar on the West Midlands Training Scheme. He passed the F.R.C.R. in 1988 and, after specialist fellowship training, became accredited in 1990. He was appointed to Kidderminster in May 1991 as a general radiologist With an interest in musculoskeletal imaging.

His initial appointment as clinical tutor is for 3 years. On being congratulated on his appointment Dr. Mantle said 'I hope that during this time I will be able to maintain the very active Postgraduate Calendar established by my predecessors, with all the benefits this brings to local G.P .5, Junior staff and career grade hospital doctors. We wish him well in this very important post.

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1992 SOCIETY EVENTS

Dinner at Spring Grove House was the he major social event of this Presidential Year and was held at Spring Grove House Bewdley, on Friday 5^th June. It was attended once again by well over 100 members and gueats. The guest speaker was Mr. Humphrey Lyttleton the well known Jazz Musician and raconteur, who treated us to a very witty and amusing discourse following an excellent meal. An equally amusing and witty vote of thanks was proposed by Mr. Walford Gillison.

THE JOHN RUSSELL CUP

On a cool, cloudy Summer afternoon in July, The annual cricket match was held at Winterbourne School . The consultants' team captained by Reg Johnstone, went in to bat first and completed the 20 overs with 1 wicket to spare, having scored 94 runs. In reply, the G.P.s captained by Frank Morgan were all out in 18 overs, having made 70 runs. The John Russel Cup was presented to Reg Johnstone by Mrs. Wilner, wife of the President, in a short ceremony at the end of play.

Consultants Team:         Johnson, F.Johnson, Evans, Karlssen, Gillison, Gould, Whitton, Cox, McAndrew, Gait, Lambert.
G.P. Team:                     Morgan, Herbert, Starkie, Wadsworth , Campion, R.Summers, R.Davies, G.Wilcox, S.Wilcox, DeCothi, Batty.

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COUNTRY COMMENT

I am a life long optimist, fishermen have to be. Changing the practice of medicine from an industrial to a rural environment, more than halving my list of patients, abandoning hospital sessions, together with a firm commitment to the avoidance of all committee work and the bonus of reduced travelling to Teme, Reabrook and the salmon and sea trout rivers of West Wales, an angler's utopia opened for me. Visions of a rural idyll with hours by the river interspersed with occasional quiet bursts of pleasurable clinical activity were dashed by Parkinson's law and the affluent 80s.

Cottages became mansions, empty derelict barns were converted into luxurious housing terraces. The Village Street , fashioned to suit pedestrians and horse-drawn traffic became jammed with posses of Porches and Range Rovers as mums transported their progeny to and from the village school. Alas, many barn conversions are now as empty as predevelopment and more prosaic vehicles obstruct the village street - the recession. Increasingly infrequent opportunities to fish the evening rise and even flog the water throughout the night on Cothi and Towy for sea trout prior to dashing back for morning surgery have been thwarted by Anno Domini.

However, when in the near future, I hand in my EC10s and pick up my cards, if the water is 'right' and the iron blues are hatching all day I will be there - garden, pension, infirmities and wife permitting, of course.

Bob Russell

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CONTINUING MEDICAL EDUCATION

There are 14 lectures in the Autumn tenrm which include a course approved for Service management. The focus will be on the Practice with discussions about the extending role of the Practice Nurse, the changing role of the Practice Manager, Primary Care Facilitators and Fund Holding. In November there will be a second meeting to develop a protocol for the treatment of asthma in children. We will be discussing prophylactic treatment. I hope that at least one doctor from each practice will be able to attend with the practice nurse. We will also be developing protocols for open access endoscopy with Dr. Booth. Finally, I will be starting Practice visits for medical audit and I again hope to be welcomed into your practice.

Baron Mendez da Costa

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TRUST STATUS FOR KIDDERMINSTER

Our application to become an NHS Trust Hospital has now become a reality and the prospectus has been published. Public consultation is now taking place and the Secretary of State will be making the final decision in September. Following the Government White Paper on health reform, it was apparent that, if we are to survive the changes, we must have the freedom to manage services with flexibility to meet local needs. We must be in a position to protect local services and be released from DHA and AHA constraints.

We already pride ourselves in having a strong management team with major involvement of doctors and nurses who can develop a local clear strategy, which is financially affordable and based on a good understanding of patient flows and likely purchasing agency requirements. The commencement of a multi-million pound building programme for phase 6 and the procurement of an Integrated Hospital

Information System (IHIS) should give a unique opportunity to prosper as a self- governing trust within the NHS. We will be better able to find, and keep, the high quality staff we need and to recognise that pay, working hours and working environment are all important factors.

  Given a successful application, the Trust will run in shadow form from October 1992, with full status on a Third-Wave Trust from April 1993.

Phillip Armitstead

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OBITUARY
PROFESSOR JOHN MALINS

It is with regret that members will have read of the recent death of Professor John Malins, Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Birmingham University .

After house jobs at Birmingham General Hospital and a spell as a G.P. he became an assistant physician to the United Birmingham Hospitals and to Kidderminster and District Genera! Hospital. In 1955 he was promoted Physician, which he remained until his retirement in 1979. He was also admissions tutor at Birmingham University Medical School , and in 1979 was accorded the signal honour of being granted a personal chair of Medicine.

In his role as consultant to Kidderminster Hospital ( Mill Street ) he attended on Mondays with out patients in the mornings, incorporating the enormous diabetic clinic of those days, and ward rounds in the afternoons. In his earlier days, he regularly cycled to Kidderminster from his home in Elmley Lovett, but in his later years his presence was marked by a familiar ageing Bentley.

He was a founder member of the British Diabetic Association and chaired its medical and scientific section. From 1978 to 1975 he was a Linacre Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. Altogether, John Malins was a remarkable all-rounder; a scholar of wild erudition, with a deep knowledge of literature, and a hockey player of county status.

In his retirement, he and his second wife Penelope Hobhouse, the writer on gardens, took charge of the National Trust Garden at Tintinhull House near Yeovil in Somerset where he planted an arboretum and wrote 'the Essential Pruning Companion' published earlier this year.

He had three sons, one of whom is Dr. Richard Malins of Bewdley, and three daughters by his first marriage to Dr. Jonna Middlemore, who, for a time, was an assistant in the Church Street Practice.

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