ART – Moving Forward, Question 4 of 5

[Roger Moore]

At ART 2019 National Conference a workshop session was held subject title ART – Moving Forward to give delegates their opportunity to comment on five questions. The notes from this workshop session will be discussed by the ART Executive Committee and take forward ideas and suggestions to shape, in a positive way, the future direction of not only ART but how we recruit and retain staff.

The five questions discussed during the workshop session are now on the forum as five separate threads. This is to give those of you who were unable to attend conference the opportunity to put forward your thoughts on these questions and a further opportunity for those who did attend conference to add to those already noted down at conference.

Many thanks in advance for taking time to answer these questions, it is your opportunity to help shape the future direction of ART.

Future conferences – yes or no? If yes how often?

[Chris Pearson]

I think that you should still have an annual conference but feel we need to have much more interaction in between the ART committee and industry and come up with a (cunning) plan to get more younger members access to the conference either with educational grants or increasing the price of the exhibition stands which could be partially offset by a reduction in industry delegates who this year outnumbered NHS delegates by about 2:1'ish.

[John Moore]

Definitely yes - continue with the conferences. I agree with Chris that the whole aspect of funding needs an overhaul. We need to get more NHS techs attending and I feel that some form of subsidising might be a way forward?

[Ian Wilde]

I agree also with John and Chris.

What we do need to be mindful of is that someone has to stay behind and look after the service while others are at ART.  

As a percentage of techs attending to total number of techs available I bet the figures are better than you imagine.  My tech team has shrunk by nearly 50% over the last few years and I can bet it is a similar trend up and down the country.

[Roger Moore]

It would be very useful to see the number of techs attending the conference as a percentage of those who theoretically could attend whilst maintaining levels of cover back in their units. That would give an indication of how successful conference is in relation to numbers attending. Of course numbers attending is only one of many measurements of how successful conference is.