Between the 2004 and 2005 South Pacific workshops, Tony Smith and I visited several of the 2004 participants to see how they were getting on and whether or not the workshop had made a difference to their work.
The results were variable and depended mostly on the amount of support they were receiving from the other staff of their hospital. This was affected by the size of the hospital, the attitudes of other staff, and to some extent the confidence of the radiographers themselves.
In the best cases there was a lot of discussion and feedback between the radiographer and the primary care-giver.
At one large rural site there was a young expatriate doctor (the only medical officer for the hospital) who was in and out of the radiology department every day and sharing ideas and feedback with the radiographer.
Perfect!
From another I got an email from the radiographer one day with an image attached and the message: “I think this shows (one diagnosis) but my surgeon thinks it shows (something else). What do you think?”.
Fantastic!
And then I heard of another site where the feedback was: “No doctor will want to know what a radiographer thinks - especially if the radiographer is woman.”
Poor everybody in that hospital.
But one common theme was that the radiographers didn’t have the right resources. Some had ancient textbooks discarded from more fortunate places, and some didn’t even have those. In many places the radiographers were paging through the PowerPoints on the CD from the workshop and trying to match their X-ray with one of the images on the computer.
I came home and resolved to do something about this. After some time there appeared a CD with 22 expanded talks, including sound-tracks, which was intended to act as an atlas of abnormal X-rays:-
This appeared in 2009. I had wanted it to be published by WHO, and Harald Ostenssen was very enthusiastic but tragically he took early retirement because of illness at about this time.
I sent copies to everybody I could think of who might use the CD, but I was unable to find a sponsor who could spread it around the world.
Somebody recommended that I talk to the ISRRT (the International Society for Radiographers and Radiation Technologists) but I made little progress with them - it proved difficult to sell the idea of a free teaching resource through emails with people I didn’t know. And there the matter rested for some time.
fate intervenes
Meanwhile I changed to part-time work at my hospital job, alternating with locum jobs in New Zealand and Australia. Through this I went several times to the city of Rockhampton, 600 km to the north of Brisbane. And through an amazing coincidence that was the home town of the ISRRT’s global director of education, Cynthia Cowling.
Cynthia Cowling
Over coffee I was able to explain the idea and demonstrate the CD, and Cynthia and I discovered shared values and ideas. She saw the CD’s potential, and through ISRRT she had some funding, a global network of contacts, and a huge membership group that was keen to learn.
And thus was born the idea of some workshops in Africa.