The Getting It Right First Time project has recently appointed an interventional radiographer to its team in order to continue the process of evaluation of the role in the UK.
Earlier this year, the NHS England Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme announced a review of interventional radiology services across England, the first since Getting It RIght First Time (GIRFT)’s inception.
This follows a more general review of radiology in 2019 – in which interventional radiology received only a brief mention.
In-depth reviews
Gillian Kitching has recently been appointed as the interventional radiology manager for the project alongside clinical lead Dr Alex Barnacle, a consultant radiologist based at Great Ormond Street Hospital.
They will work together to perform site visits and produce reports for individual hospitals, which will feed into a national report on the provision of IR services.
GIRFT seeks to perform in-depth reviews of different services, benchmarking trusts against each other and against national data sets. Doing so will help to improve services and address health inequalities, Mrs Kitching explained.
Exemplary service delivery
Currently, the programme is in the design phase, developing a questionnaire that will be sent to the 144 sites around the UK that offer interventional radiology services and also reviewing the data available from the RCR Census and in Model Hospital.
In the early months of 2025, the team will begin visits to three pilot sites, before continuing with face to face or virtual visits at each of the interventional radiology sites across the country.
Once the team has completed the majority of these site visits, they will move on to completing the national report, collating themes that emerge from centres of excellent practice to demonstrate what exemplary service delivery looks like, as well as those themes which appear to be preventing a high quality of care.
'Foster improvement across the board'
The SoR has welcomed the news of Mrs Kitching’s appointment and will collaborate with the GIRFT team to ensure interventional radiographer roles align with professional policy, support high-quality patient care, and promote best practices.
Mrs Kitching said: “I’ve worked as a radiographer in interventional radiology for 18 years, and during that time the specialty has evolved tremendously. The complexity of procedures has increased and it’s essential that we share our successes and challenges to foster improvement across the board.
“The opportunity to take a look at what’s going on in interventional radiology across England, to share best practice and make a difference to patients – it’s incredible.”
Mrs Kitching is also the divisional modality lead for interventional radiology across Manchester Foundation Trust.
Find out more about the GIRFT project here.
(Image: Gillian Kitching)