Consultants must demonstrate effective use of their Supporting Professional Activities to ensure employers support them.
This is the message of a BMA report on SPAs, which reminds employers that under the consultant contract a consultant should in most cases undertake 7.5 direct clinical care programmed activities and 2.5 SPAs.
It also calls on NHS managers must invest in their consultants to enable them to improve their skills, develop research and new techniques, build their services and contribute to innovation. This is particularly important during a period of financial constraint, the BMA says.
The report includes examples of achievements made by consultants across Scotland, which have only been possible because of SPA time and demonstrates the importance of non-clinical time to promoting quality in NHS services.
Tayside consultant, Dr Stephen Curran, used his SPA time to set up a community-based eating disorder service for his health board; Mr Alastair Murray, orthopaedic surgeon at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh, was able to create a new service for treating clubfoot in South East Scotland; and, Dr Graham Tydeman, O&G consultant in Fife, designed and implemented one of the first fully integrated video archive, telemetry and electronic reporting and audit packages in fetal medicine, which is now used in over 30 units in the UK.
Dr Charles Saunders, chairman of the BMA’s Scottish Consultants Committee, said: “The Scottish Government is shortly to publish a Quality Strategy for the NHS in Scotland and the role of consultants as clinical leaders is central to this agenda. NHS managers must not be short sighted and recognise that SPA time is an essential part of a consultant’s role. SPA time is also essential to enable consultants to keep up to date with their skills as well as to develop and innovate services.
“Consultants want to improve services for patients. It’s largely down to their persistence, dogged determination and leadership that these services have developed to the benefit of their patients.”
Read more on SPAs.
