Dear Liver EQA member,
Happy New Year to everyone,
1. UK Liver Pathology Group
Theliver subcommittee of the BSG Pathology Section met on 10th December. We discussed the next steps in establishing a UK Liver Pathology Group – which I am convinced will be important as a more formal, sustainable structure for the work we do in coordinating CPD and quality assurance in liver pathology.
The attached PowerPoint slides which I included in the December meeting summarise the background to this. We anticipate that all EQA members will become members of the UKLPG. I circulated our draft constitution in November (also on the website under 'Proposal for UK Liver Pathology Group ) We now need to establish a committee. Please think about joining in with this, either now or in the future - expressions of interest can be made in the questionnaire - see below.
2. 2015 circulations
The results for circulations LL and LM are calculated and uploaded onto EQAlite. The PowerPoints from the meeting, with the agreed scoring criteria are on the virtualpathology website
The way that EQAlite works is that you can print your own results and certificates from their website. Log on and click on the 'circulations' tab, then on the circulation (LL or LM). You'll see the'CPD' tab which is for the certificate and the 'report' tab which shows your score, and the scoring criteria. At the end is a chart of your score compared with the average and minimum, for circulations run on EQAlite - so only the 2015 circulations at present but that will grow. I've found this may depend on which Internet brower you use though - you may just see the word 'chart' .
3. Fibrosis study
Please take time to see how your fibrosis assessment compares with everyone else - and encourage your trainees and colleagues to take part. As an example - reference images of cases with least and most fibrosis are attached. When completed you can self- accredit a CPD point.
This is a two part study. 1 - to stage a set of Sirius red stained sections of liver biopsies on a range of none/early/bridging/late stage fibrosis, 2. to stage a second set with using reference images of biopsies -these are biopsies which, when assessed by 8 UK Liver pathologists, either had complete agreement or 4:4 split across adjacent fibrosis stages (the 'threshold' cases) . All the details are on the website,
under 'Liver fibrosis study'.
4. EQA Subscriptions
So far we have received 32 of the annual subscriptions for 2015. You can see if your subscription has been paid by logging onto EQAlite and clicking on the 'your schemes' button. If your status is ACTIVE - paid, then all is well. If your status shows as 'active - to be invoiced', please contact your finance administrator and ask them to pay it. The invoice date was 11th November, and description 'Annual Subscription for participation in the UK National Liver Histopathology EQA Scheme' However, I have removed the necessity of payment required before your results and certificate can be viewed and downloaded.
5. 2016 circulations
I am still waiting for more cases before Circulation LN can start. Please will you send straight away any that you have already put to one side? I am hoping LN can start by the end of January.
The 2016 meeting will be in Cheltenham, on Thursday 6th October, local organiser will be Stefan Hubscher – please save the date if you plan to come.
6. BSG Pathology Section – liver subcommittee
The liver subcommittee met on 10th December, minutes from the meeting are attached and will be on the Liver pages website. Stefan is now the RCPath sub-specialty adviser for liver and his annual report is also in this section of the website. This year we plan to update the RCPath dataset for liver cancer, and maintain the now established cycle of liver pathology CPD meetings. We also want to work with the BSG clinicians and radiologists to produce more general guidance for medical liver biopsies. The 2016 BSG meeting in Liverpool in June will include a symposium ‘Liver Pathology – best practice and latest innovations’ on June 22nd.
7. Questionnaire
Finally, please will all of you answer the quick Surveymonkey questionnaire by clicking on the link
This questionnaire is in four sections –
- UK Liver Pathology Group
- Liver EQA Scheme – submitting cases
- RCPath workload units in liver pathology
- Future arrangements for liver transplant pathology meetings (for those working in transplant centres).
Thank you for your continuing support of the Liver EQA Scheme.
Best wishes,
Judy
Dr JI Wyatt
Organiser, UK National Liver Histopathology EQA Scheme
20.01.16