I am a full time spinal consultant working in a busy teaching hospital. We have a busy unit with several junior doctors. We are an academic unit with close connections with the local Biosciences department for which I am a faculty lecturer. I am also on the AO spine teaching faculty, having lectured to junior doctors and theatre nursing staff.
I am competent in dealind with a wide variety of spinal disorders in adults and children, on an inpatient and outpatient level. I have worked in two specialised spinal units and have had the opportunity to work with several different consultants and colleagues that has given me a wide experience of managmenet and operative intervation in spinal disorders. The variety ofopinions gained from this experience has also increased my knowledge base.
I have gained operative experience in both adult and paediatric cases. I an perform anterior and posterior spinal fusions for degenerative disease, trauma and neoplastic disease. I have gained a wide experience of anterior and posterior correction of scoliosis deformity. I am proficient in injection techniques having routinely performed injection lists, including nerve root blocks, facet injections, discograms, I.D.E.T. and more recently the 'decompression catheter' for dis prolapse.
In my training, I have been responsible for presenting cases at a weekly case discussion programme and have taken a leading role in arranging a weekly spinal educational meeting. I have also organised training sessions for radiographers to demonstrate imaging techniques for spinal injections and a weekly in-house meeting for our SHO's. I regularly attentd and resent cases and research at spinal meetings on a regional, national and international level. I hav attended several postgraduate courses in spinal surgery nationally and internationally and am on the AO spinal faculty.
When on-call, I am responsible for managing patients presenting with spinal disorders through the Emergency Unit, referred from primary care, inpatients on general wards, ahigh dependency area and intensive care units as well as referrals to our tertiary referral unit.
I have taken a leading role in the developing the ongoing clinical research activity within the Departmnet. On a personal level, I have written two book chapters for fpinal text for nursing staff and through other research have become conversant with the process of Ethics Committee submission, Trust Research and Development application, data collection and analysis, statistics and audit. I hope to develop these skills to direct future research developments within the Department.
My aim is to continue and expand my interest and proficiency in surgery for spinal disorders in adults and children during my future consultant career. Myself and two other colleagues are in discussions with the BMJ publishing department in the preparation of ABC of Spinal disorders text, hopefully to the published next year.