We are delighted to introduce this year's team of Regional National Pathology Week (NPW) Coordinators. Please have a look to see who's been appointed in your region. There are some familiar faces but also some new team members. We are particularly pleased to welcome the first of our dedicated Trainee Coordinators, whose role is to encourage fellow trainees to participate in NPW and other public engagement projects. Contact email addresses are provided below.
London
This year’s joint coordinators for the London region are Dr Kay Lawson and Dr Maesha Deheragoda.
Our aim is to assist London based pathologists, scientists and vets with their events, culminating in another entertaining, and fun National Pathology Week (NPW). We will be building on last year’s success by supporting activities in local hospitals, and plan to coordinate variety of events in museums and science centres. We are keen to hear from anyone wishing to organise events, so please contact us with any ideas you may have.
mgdeheragoda@doctors.org.uk, kaylawson@doctors.org.uk
South East England
Dr Meg Aston-Key and Claire Brannon will be coordinating NPW for South East England.
Since being involved in NPW since 2008, the events organised in the region have grown in number and diversity. I am delighted to take on the role of regional coordinator and hope to encourage participation from as many laboratories as possible.
meg@doctors.org.uk
I was involved in several events for NPW 2009 and I’m looking forward to putting new ideas into practice this year. As a biochemistry trainee, I realise that pathology trainees have been responsible for coordinating many fantastic NPW events in the past. I’m excited about tapping into this resource once more and will be here to support you for this year’s NPW, which, I’m sure, will be the best yet.
c.brannon@nhs.net
South West England
Dr Vinita Mishra will be coordinating NPW for South West England.
I thoroughly enjoyed working with local schools during NPW 2009. This year I am hoping to involve more trusts in the south west. I am planning to encourage colleagues to engage the public about pathology and its role its role in keeping mothers and babies healthy. Please get in touch if you would like to discuss any ideas.
Vinita.mishra@salisbury.nhs.uk
Trent
Dr Suha Deen, Dr Ravishankar Sargur and Dr Vanessa Wong will be coordinating NPW for Trent.
We had a great experience during NPW last year, interacting with school students and the public. I have just completed an immunology masterclass for medical students and have been impressed by their enthusiasm towards pathology. It also made me aware of the significant lack of exposure to pathology in their curriculum I am looking forward to NPW 2010 and plan to focus on medical students this year as they are the pathologists of the future! Other key areas are to increase the awareness and profile of pathology amongst other hospital specialties and general practice.
Ravishankar.Sargur@sth.nhs.uk, sdeen@doctors.org.uk
As a trainee microbiologist, I have really enjoyed bringing my evolving experiences of pathology to the public through outreach work at local schools and science festivals. For NPW last year we held a range of activities including events at the local gym and an interactive tour of our laboratories for school students. The 2010 theme “Pathology: the building blocks of life” provides an excellent conceptual framework for pathologists to enhance education and inspire the public to learn more about the role of our profession in healthcare.
This year I am hoping to create an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ experience. Imagine falling down the rabbit hole into the world of molecular pathology or shrinking down to the size of these building blocks. To the public our scientific terminology must appear not that far off from the nonsensical language of Carroll’s crazed creations! I’ll be encouraging many more colleagues to join in the fun this year.
vanessawong@doctors.org.uk
West Midlands
This year’s coordinators for the West Midlands are Kamaljit Chatha, Asif Quadri and Vivek Mudaliar.
As a biochemist, I have been involved in many public events for NPW and for the ACB West Midlands Promoting Laboratory Medicine Group. These have included organising Café Scientifique and ‘Meet the Scientist’ events at Thinktank Science Museum and all have been successful due to the hard work of regional scientists. Making NPW 2010 bigger and better than last year is an achievement that the West Midlands are eager to be involved in. We plan to hold another Thinktank event, seminars, laboratory tours, grand round events and stands and build upon the successes of last year.
kamaljit.chatha@heartofengland.nhs.uk
As well as organising events for a range of audiences including midwives, trainees and schools, I will be assisting Vivek with the programme of events. I am also happy to assist people in the region who want to do an event and don’t know where to start.
Asif.Quadri@swbh.nhs.uk, Vivek.Mudaliar@sath.nhs.uk
East of England
This year’s coordinators for the East of England are Dr Tim Wreghitt, Dr Laszlo Igali and Dr Michael Eden.
With this year’s theme being ‘The Building Blocks of Life’, there will be many opportunities, especially working with maternity, neonatal and paediatric colleagues to put on innovative public engagement events to explain the benefits of the work we do and how we work in multidisciplinary teams. Once again, we will be working with The Naked Scientist to produce podcasts of some of our events. Please contact me if you have a proposed event you would like to organise.
tim.wreghitt@hpa.org.uk
I have been involved in the organisation of local NPW events since 2008. Being a histopathologist my aim was to take our interesting microscopic world closer to everyone. Thanks to my lifelong interest in IT, I created a website (www.norwichpathology.org) to support the events. We organised well-attended school and public days, with the help of colleagues from the pathology disciplines and guest speakers from the hospital. I would like to help everyone in our region to organise exciting events for 2010.
laszlo.igali@nnuh.nhs.uk
I am a specialist histopathology trainee in the Eastern Deanery with a clinical medicine background. This year as trainee lead, I want to involve trainee pathologists and demonstrate why pathology week is important to the future of pathology. Plans for this year include a virtual autopsy in which we hope to include clinicians, a pathology pub-quiz and improving the accessibility of events that were sold-out last year.
m.eden@nhs.net
North of England
Dr John Drury will be coordinating events for the North of England region.
Our aim for this year is to raise public awareness of our major contribution to healthcare and enjoy a third very successful NPW by involving as many laboratory staff as possible. As in 2009, our target audiences will be hospital staff, colleges and universities and the public. We plan to reach our audiences by holding events in hospital foyers and cafeterias, shopping centres, colleges and universities and by open days and evenings in the lab.
john.drury@stees.nhs.uk
North West England
Dr Bushra Hamid will be coordinating events for the North West region.
This year we intend to encourage all our colleagues working in all pathology disciplines and in particular paediatric and gynaecological pathologists, to take part. We hope that NHS North West and the local media will support us to promote pathology and engage with the public. I look forward to working with colleagues to make NPW 2010 a success.
Bushra.hamid@coch.nhs.uk
