The President's Message

Looking ahead to Oxford – and beyond

I hope everyone is looking forward to a successful Scientific Meeting in Oxford. The programme for the Meeting has been finalised and is available on the microsite. A large number of rooms have been provisionally reserved in Christ Church College on a ‘first come first served’ basis and, again, the microsite can help you with bookings. Our Annual Dinner will be held in Christ Church Hall - of Harry Potter and Hogwarts fame - so it’s well worth trying to arrange adjacent accommodation. Arrangements for the training day on Wednesday, September 8, are also well advanced and can be found on the microsite.

The President Elect, Graeme Posten from Liverpool, will be taking over from me after the AGM on Thursday September 9, to which I hope as many members as possible can attend. This is the chance for you to bring up topics which you feel need to be addressed by AUGIS and to raise any concerns you may have regarding current issues in training and clinical practice, either in your own region, or on a national level.

There will be an opportunity at the meeting to hear how the various subspecialty national audits are progressing, along with news of current and future clinical trials in the various areas of upper GI surgery.

As my two year tenure as President draws to a close, I would like to thank you all for the privilege of representing AUGIS during this time and for the enormous help and support I have received. I would particularly like to thank all those on Council and the Executive (Nick Hayes, Ian Beckingham, John Primrose, David Berry, Richard Charnley and Graeme Posten) in addition to the two specialty managers, Harriet Innes and Sarvjit Madhar, not forgetting Sheila Hodgson, who retired last year. An enormous amount of administrative work is required behind the scenes and none of it would be possible without the hard work and enthusiasm of all these people, as well as the membership as a whole.

The AUGIS website has undergone major changes over the last year and we are indebted to Emmanuel Amadiegwu, Helen Riley and Abrie Botha for their help in keeping it interesting and up-to-date. Please do get in touch with your ideas and suggestions for further improvements.

Many of you have stepped in and offered to sit on various committees for NICE, comment on various guidelines, curricula reviews, and so on. This all takes a great deal of time and without your help and support AUGIS would not be able to contribute as successfully as it has to developments in surgical training and clinical practice. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with everyone involved in AUGIS, meeting many of you at our meetings and very much look forward to seeing AUGIS develop further over the next few years.

I hope you all have an enjoyable summer holiday and look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in Oxford.

With best wishes,

Simon Paterson-Brown
President, AUGIS