Big changes are happening here at Barts! Our group is growing and we are expanding our research activity to match our clinical caseload.
We welcomed, Dimitrios Manoukian, a new substantive colleague working jointly with us at the Royal London Hospital and at the Harlow Hospital. We also look forward to a new locum, replacing a colleague going on maternity leave. We will soon be welcoming two new fellows – one in trauma and the other for elective work starting later this year. This will streamline our services and help the fellows to get the most out of their time with us – time to focus on trauma and then time to focus on all the elective work that our service has to offer. We have new opportunities too that we will be advertising very shortly! We will have two consultant posts, that we expect to be advertised on our website within the next few weeks, one of which is substantive. We are particularly excited about the role these new colleagues with have in our ever-busy DDH service across the Trust.
Clinics are still very busy, both in elective work and trauma; like everywhere things have been tough with regards to access to theatre and pressures over access to inpatient beds as a result of COVID-related bed pressures. Despite this we have treated a large number of children with both congenital and acquired conditions, including many children with fractures and other orthopaedic injuries.
We have really started to accelerate our research interests in the group; the explosion of trials in children’s orthopaedics across the UK and our new academic centre have been great catalysts. We are involved in three major international, NIHR funded studies: CRAFFT (Children’s Radius Acute Fracture Fixation Trial), SCIENCE (Surgery or Cast for Injuries of the EpicoNdyle in Children’s Elbows) and CORE-Kids (What are the most important outcomes to measure following childhood fractures?). I recently worked on my first major successful grant application as part of a multicentre team for PICBONE (Imaging in Paediatric Osteomyelitis) and have two more projects on the horizon. These have been eye-opening for me and the group – more details to follow but expect future trials coming from East London as well as Liverpool and Oxford!
