Specialist Clinical Addiction Network Conference 2010

Hotel Diagonal Zero, Barcelona

Addiction Treatment: Evidence in Practice

 Thursday 30th September and Friday 1st October

The usual variety of evidence based practice and translation of the latest policy and guidelines into the real world, complemented by relevant research and other essential issues in the clinical treatment of addictions.

Who should attend?

Open to all specialists with, or preparing for a leadership role in the field, including psychiatrists (all grades), clinical psychologists, nurses, specialist GPs and other allied health professionals.

The programme will include sessions on:

• Policy
• Addiction psychiatry in a changing landscape
• Gambling
• New Frontiers
• New business for addiction psychiatrists
• Opiod substitution therapy across Europe
• Alcohol
• Sick doctors

Keynote speaker: Dr Antoni Gual

Other speakers include: Dr Peter Anderson, Dr Owen Bowden-Jones, Dr Eilish Gilvarry, Dr James Bell, Dr Adam Windstock, Dr Ken Wilson, Dr Andrew Johns, Prof. John Strang, Dr Marta Torrens, Dr Nick Barton, Prof. Anne Lingford-Hughes, to name a few.

For futher information please contact Rebecca Murchie E: rebecca.murchie@nta-nhs.org.uk

T: 020 7972 1982

Registration details coming shortly...

Ten steps to win a tender

Dr Owen Bowden-Jones, Consultant Addiction Psychiatrist, CNWL Foundation Trust, London

Dr Owen Bowden-Jones recently undertook a survey of Addiction Faculty members to discover the lessons learnt from re-tendering and service re-design from around the country. The survey asked the question, "What advice would you give another consultant to help them prepare their service for a re-tendering process?" More than 50 members responded with the vast majority working in NHS Trusts, two thirds of which held Foundation status. Three quarters of respondents had recently been or were in the process of a re-tender and most of the others were undergoing service re-design. More than half of respondents felt they had some influence on the outcome of the re-tender/service redesign. Interestingly, most said that their Trust was looking to compete for new business. When asked how to best prepare a service for a re-tender, the answers roadly fell into the following 10 Themes.

1 If possible, avoid a re-tender and instead consider remodelling. Re-tendering is time consuming and highly stressful. Consider the vision of the commissioner andsee if this can be achieved byworking in collaboration within a re-modelling exercise. The better youunderstand the commissioner's views and the more open your service is to working flexibly and innovatively, the more likely you will be able to avoid the disruption of a full retendering process.

Read more in the latest SCANbites.

SCANbites Index: new article search facility

You can now use the SCANbites Index to retrieve all past articles we have published  This new facility allows for searching by author, article type or keyword.

Simply click along the different tabs, located at the bottom("author, "article" or "keyword").  Clicking on the link provided will take you to the appropriate issue. Fuller instructions for use are on the front page of the document (please see the "Guide" tab).  

To use this new tool, download it from the documents store