MINUTES OF ACC ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

Held at:

Central Hall, University Of York

On:

Tuesday 11th September 2001 at 17.15

1

APOLOGIES

received from Maggie Fitchett and Jonathan Waters.

2

MINUTES OF THE AGM HELD ON 12TH SEPTEMBER 2000

Item 3 (ii) should read ‘2003, Glasgow’ and ‘2004 Hosted by Leeds at York’.

3

CHAIRMAN'S REPORT

Lorraine Gaunt began by reminding everyone that the minutes of the ACC Council and ETC meetings were now placed on the ACC Website thus allowing members to keep more up to date with current developments within the profession. Websites of other organizations (RCPath and CPSM) also contained relevant information.

(i)

Election Results

a)

Lorraine welcomed both Richard Hall and Lindsey Connell who have been elected to replace Andrew Beddow and Gavin Cuthbert on the JLC and thanked Andrew and Gavin for their help and contribution to Council and the profession over the last 3 years.

b)

Maggie Fitchett’s term of office as deputy chairman has come to an end. Council has agreed that in future the Secretary would act as deputy chairman when necessary.

(ii)

State Registration and Association of Clinical Scientists (ACS).

a)

Clinical Scientists are now registered with the CPSM, and individuals who have not yet registered should not use the title ‘Clinical Scientist’, but instead describe themselves as ‘pre-registration' followed by modality e.g. Pre-Registration Clinical Cytogeneticist.

b)

The 3rd stage however is not yet progressing and pre-registration Clinical Cytogenetists who have become eligible to register since October 2000 are unable to do so, the current hold-up being with the Privy Council who has yet not approved the rules for qualification. Once the rules are agreed there will need to be an assessment of competence of the individual by the ACS. It is likely that the assessment of competence will involve the submission of a portfolio to the ACS as well as an oral examination (an examination is a statutory requirement of the CPSM act of 1960). The certificate of attainment awarded by the ACS will be automatically accepted by the CPSM.

c)

On the 1^st April 2002 the CPSM will be replaced by the Health Professions Council (HPC). Initially the HPC will continue to use the CPSM rules and regulations.

(iii)

‘Making the Change’.

(It should be noted that the devolved administrations have not yet decided whether to implement the strategy.)

(iv)

Confederation of Clinical Scientists Organisations (CCSO).

The Confederation of Clinical Scientists Organisations is intending to change its structure to become a ‘Federation for Healthcare Science’. It is the intention for this new federation to become the single representative organisation for all the professions within Healthcare science.

(v)

Association of Clinical Scientists

a)

Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) revised Guidelines. 
A major advance of note this year has been the publication by the Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens of the document entitled ‘Revised Advice on Laboratory Containment Measures for Work with Tissue Samples in Clinical Cytogenetics Laboratories’. This document is a supplement to the 1995, ‘Protection against blood-borne infections : HIV and Hepatitis.’. This revision resulted following correspondence, initially between members of the Profession and Council, and subsequently between Council and the RCPath, with the RCPath convening a Working Party. The Chairman once again thanked Selwyn Roberts and Stuart Imrie who were the ACC representatives and who played a very active role in the production of this invaluable advice.
The document has been circulated to all Heads of Departments and it can also be downloaded from the ACC website.

b)

Professional Standards Committee.
Another advance has been the publication of the ‘Professional Guidelines for Clinical Cytogenetics’ which have also been accepted for publication by the Journal of Medical Genetics. These guidelines are also available on the ACC website. Lorraine thanked all members of the committee, chaired by Tony Potter.

c)

Best Practice Guidelines (BPG).
Council has agreed to implement the recommendations of a strategic group that had met to discuss the feasibility and desirability of the ACC establishing Best Practice Guidelines workshops. The Professional Standards Committee will be responsible for the organisation of the workshops and for the issuing of any guidelines resulting from them, following ratification by Council.

d)

Scientific Committee.
This committee is now chaired by Barbara Gibbons and activities during the last year include:
The publication of the ‘X-Autosome’ paper in April 2001 in Human Genetics.
The supernumerary marker chromosome study in prenatal diagnosis is ongoing.
John Wolstenholme and Kim Smith have successfully secured a grant of £14,000 from the Birth Defects Foundation on behalf on the Prenatal Diagnosis Working Group to continue the update of the CVS survey and this work is about to commence.
Maggie Fitchett has once again been successful in securing funding for the Chromosome Abnormality Database for one more year.

e)

Education and Training Committee (ETC).
In the last year the ETC, under the Chairmanship of Maggie Fitchett, has produced and circulated criteria for evaluating laboratories for accreditation for A Grade training, with a full re-evaluation occurring every 5 years. An increase in the registration fee for Grade A trainees (From £1,000 to £1,200) has been announced although this is the first increase for 10 years. A working party has been convened to consider the options for a possible MRCPath examination in oncology cytogenetics.

f)

Study Days.
During the last year the following Study Days have being run. ‘Infertility’ (held in Bristol), ‘Molecular Cytogenetics’ (Oxford), ‘Laboratory Safety and Management’ (Glasgow) and a day for Grade A trainees held in Birmingham.

g)

MTO Training.
A number of laboratories are actively piloting the MTO training programme which has been drawn up, following the Occupational Standards framework, up by the Birmingham Laboratory. Six-monthly meetings are taking place between representatives from labs. involved to review progress.

h)

Continual Professional Development (CPD).
No one favoured option for this has emerged as yet. It will be clearer once the Health Professions Council requirements are made known. The ACC however is encouraging everyone to keep a learning record, and the advice is either to use the RCPath training logbook or register for the RCPath CPD scheme.

(vi)

Clinical Pathology Accreditation (CPA).

a)

CPA has confirmed that it is no longer acceptable to employ home-workers in Cytogenetics. In order to allow time to phase this practise out and make alternative arrangements the CPA Board of Directors have -agreed to retain the current standard until 31^st December 2002 after which any department using home-workers will not be eligible for accreditation.

b)

CPA is currently looking into the requirement for safety zones around centrifuges. To date they have received conflicting advice and have been advised to approach the HSE for guidance.

c)

The CPA office will only accept applications within the current standards until December 2001. Implementation of the new standards will begin in April 2003.

(vii)

British Society for Human Genetics (BSHG)

a)

The ACC representatives on the BSHG are currently Lorraine Gaunt, Katie Waters and John Wolstenholme.

b)

On behalf of the BSHG the ACC representatives drafted a paper on the potential sequelae to the rate of invasive testing following the report from the UK National Screening Committee on screening for Down syndrome.

c)

As reported at the Nottingham Spring meeting, the ACC had devised a system for ‘contract currencies’. The intention would be to use some form of contract currencies from Cytogenetics, Molecular Genetics and Clinical Genetics within the National Specialised Service definition for Genetics to commission services.

(viii)

Joint Medical Genetics Committee

Val Davison has been selected as the Cytogeneticist representative on the National Genetics Commissioning Advisory Group, (GenCAG). Information about GenCAG is available in the June issue of the BSHG Newsletter.

(ix)

Royal College of Pathologists

a)

John Barber represented Genetics on a working party investigating the use of human tissue. The report ‘Transitional guidelines to facilitate changes in procedures for handling ’surplus’ and archival material from human biological samples’ was published in June and is available from the RCPath website.

b)

The Standing Committee on Clinical Science has developed a generic framework for the MRCPath examinations for all disciplines.

(x)

National External Quality Assessment Scheme (NEQAS).

This is not part of the ACC but does impact on it and there have been a number of changes to NEQAS this year.

a)

Jonathan Waters will step down as scheme organiser in November after holding the post for 5 years. Interviews for a replacement will take place later this month (25^th Sept). Lorraine then thanked Jonathan on behalf of the profession for his hard work and dedication and wished him well in his new post.

b)

Teresa Davies is now chair of the NEQAS Steering Committee and Edna Maltby has replaced Tony Potter on the Steering Committee as the ACC representative.

c)

Following modifications made after the CPA inspection of the scheme, resubmission has taken place and a reply is awaited from CPA.

(xi)

ACC Spring Meetings

a)

The ACC Spring Meeting was held Nottingham earlier this year and Lorraine thanked all the staff of the Nottingham Lab. for their organisation and planning which ensured the success of the meeting.

b)

The following venues are planned fro the forthcoming Spring Meetings, 2002 -Cambridge, 2003 - Glasgow and 2004, organised by the Leeds laboratory, but held in York. The ACC is now looking for offers to host this event for future years.

(xii)

Website – (www.cytogenetics.org.uk)
The Chairman thanked Mike Creasy for maintaining and developing the website. As well as the documents referred to earlier, other documents available on the website include the ratified minutes from both ACC Council meetings and ETC meetings

(xiii)

Vote of Thanks.
Lorraine Gaunt then announced to the membership that Maggie Fitchett had informed her Trust of her wish to retire within the next six months. It was likely then that she would not attend another ACC gathering in an official capacity. Lorraine cited the ‘inordinate amount of work’ which Maggie had done for the profession over the many years and thanked her (in her absence) on behalf of the profession for her huge contribution to the work and advancement of the ACC.

4

Resolution 4.1.

Proposal for Emeritus Fellow - Professor Maj Hultén
Proposed by John Barber, seconded by Jonathan Waters. (Proposal read by Katie Waters.)
This proposal was unanimously accepted.

5

JLC REPORT

Carol Baird gave this report on behalf of the JLC to overview of the work carried out by JLC representatives throughout this last year.

(i)

Carol welcomed the two new JLC representatives, Lindsey Connell (Oxford), and Richard Hall (St Georges, London). The returning representatives are Caroline Baird (Glasgow) and Una Maye (Liverpool). Carol then thanked the outgoing representatives Gavin Cuthbert and Andrew Beddow for all their help and support. During their 3 years as JLC representatives, Gavin has been involved in the production of a careers leaflet which has been distributed to University Careers Advisory Services and Andrew has served on both the Scientific Committee and Education and Training Committee.

(ii)

Over the last year the JLC have revised and updated the list of all laboratories which have junior members of the ACC. These labs. have all been approached and have been encouraged to contact the JLC via e-mail, telephone or letter, but no requests or issues have been raised by any of the contacts. In order to increase the profile of JLC, it is intended to hold a meeting with named JLC contacts from each lab. at the Spring meeting next year in Cambridge.

(iii)

Una is the JLC representative on the Working Party to investigate the possibility of a specialist RCPath examination in Oncology/Haematology.

(iv)

Andrew as the JLC rep on the Education and Training Committee has circulated all junior members of ACC to try and encourage participation in the organization of study days. Responses are currently awaited.

(v)

Carol is JLC representative on the CPD working party.

(vi)

The JLC would like to try and encourage junior members of the ACC to feedback to their laboratory JLC contact, who in turn would get in touch with any of the 4 JLC representatives, only in this way can the junior membership have a real voice in the ACC

6

Treasurer’s Report.

(i)

John Wolstenholme introduced the new format of the accounts and assured the membership that the accounts were in a ‘stable situation’. There were no questions regarding the accounts.

(ii)

The adoption of the accounts was proposed by Simon Larkins and seconded by Norman Pratt. The re-appointment of the auditors, Wilkins Kennedy was proposed by Val Davison and seconded by Graham Sykes.

7

Correspondence.

None.

8

Matters arising from the minutes of the AGM held on 12^th September 2000.

None

9

Any Other Business

The awarding of the ACC Junior Prizes

10

Date of next meeting.

To be arranged, during the British Human Genetics Conference, 2002.

Meeting closed at 18.20