The Presidents Message

The Presidents Message From Mr Simon Paterson-Brown, President of AUGIS I hope all of you who attended the recent meeting in Liverpool enjoyed themselves. On behalf of all of you I would like to formally thank the local organising Committee and especially Mike Zeiderman; the AUGIS secretariat, and in particular Sheila Hodgson and Harriet Innes; and the Council of AUGIS, in particular Ian Beckingham, Rowan Parks and Merv Rees, for all their hard work. It was an excellent Conference and many of our guests commented on the friendly and enthusiastic atmosphere which was obvious to them. Rowan Parks has now come to the end of his five year term as Chairman of the Education and Training committee and I think everyone has recognised what a huge amount of work he has done in producing some excellent educational programmes for our meetings in addition to representing our interests on the council of the ASGBI - ‘thank you Rowan’. We are delighted to welcome Prof John Primrose as Rowan’s replacement and I have no doubt he is well suited to continue the current strong educational and training ethos of our Association. I would like to thank Merv Rees, our retiring President, for all his tremendous hard work and commitment over the last two years. In addition to guiding us through two very successful Conferences, he has represented our interests on the Council of ASGBI and the newly formed Federation of gastro-intestinal specialists, chaired by Dr Kelvin Palmer, President of the BSG. AUGIS is the representative body for the education, training and clinical standards of Hepato-biliary, Oesophago-gastric and Bariatric surgery in Great Britain and Ireland and Merv has worked tirelessly to ensure that our interests are heard at the highest levels. His act will be a very hard one to follow. Contributing to national audit programmes will become increasingly important for all practicing Consultants and AUGIS will continue to try and facilitate this where possible. As Chairman of the Audit and Clinical Services committee, Richard Hardwick has made tremendous strides and we are very grateful to him for all his hard work. Now it is up to all of us to enter our data. Finally I would like to encourage all of you to continue supporting AUGIS. It is our Association and it is here to represent each and every one of us. In addition to providing excellent postgraduate training days and educational meetings, we will be involved over the next few years with re-validation, re-accreditation, specialist training, curriculum revision and post-CCT fellowship appointments. Let us hope that AUGIS continues to go from strength to strength. We are here to represent every clinician involved in Upper GI surgery, both members and affiliates and if there is anything which any of you feel we should be doing, or could be doing better, please feel free to write to me. There is a great deal of expertise within AUGIS and I have no doubt that we can mobilise this as and when required, be it for clinical, educational or, dare I say it, political assistance. Anyone who wishes more involvement within AUGIS should consider applying for either the post of Chairman of the Clinical Services committee or Chairman of the Audit committee, both of which we are now advertising. I look forward to meeting as many of you as possible over the coming two years and serving you all to the best of my ability. Simon Paterson-Brown Read The Past Presidents Message Here - Myrddin Rees Read The Past Presidents Message Here - Richard Hardwick