QHA Trent is British.  So what? 

In fact, it comes to making contributions to healthcare and healthcare knowledge, British medicine and healthcare has not done so badly over the years.  

Indeed, a number of modest medical successes over the ages can be chalked up, including having a significant hand in the following:

• the circulation of the blood (William Harvey)
• the measurement of blood pressure (Reverend Stephen Hale)
• surgical antisepsis (Lord Joseph Lister)
• surgical asepsis (Robert Lawson Tait)
• vaccination (Edward Jenner)
• chloroform anaesthesia (Sir James Simpson)
• isolation of the influenza virus (Sir Charles Stuart-Harris)
• vitamins (Sir Frederick Rowland Hopkins - received the Nobel Prize)
• the nerve action potential (Sir Alan Hodgkin & Sir Andrew Huxley - received the Nobel Prize)
• the discovery of acetylcholine as a neurotransmitter (Henry Hallett Dale - received the Nobel Prize)
  
• penicillin antibiotics (Sir Alexander Fleming - received the Nobel Prize)
• the double helix of DNA (Francis Crick - received the Nobel Prize)

There is more.

The Chamberlen family invented the obstetric forceps, John Hunter is recognised worldwide as the Father of modern surgery and dentistry, William Withering discovered the potent heart drug digitalis (digoxin), a British doctor (Thomas Percival) is considered the father-figure of modern Medical Ethics, while another (John Snow) is considered the father-figure of scientific epidemiology for his work on cholera transmission.  James Blundell, an obstetrician, performed the first successful human blood transfusion. Harold Hopkins invented the fibreoptic endoscope and Frank Pantridge the portable defibrillator.  Alexander Wood invented the hypodermic syringe. James Braid pioneered medical hypnotism.

The first IVF-derived baby was conceived and born in the UK (the work of the late Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards), Martin Evans discovered the embyronic stem cell, Sir Richard Doll discovered the link between smoking and lung cancer, and Charles Darwin generated one of the greatest scientific advances of all time, namely the theory of evolution by natural selection.

British doctors have shared in many Nobel Prizes, including for the discovery of insulin (John McLeod), malaria transmission (Sir Ronald Ross), receptor blocking drugs (Sir James Black), Kreb's cycle (Sir Hans Krebs), the discovery of acquired immune tolerance and work on organ and graft rejection (Sir Peter Medawar), the discovery of prostaglandins (John Vane) and, most recently. for the aforementioned IVF (Robert Edwards). 

In medical imaging, there have been Nobel prizes for the development of MRI scanning (Sir Peter Mansfield) and CT scanning (Sir Godfrey Hounsfield).  To add to that, Ian Donald in Glasgow is universally accepted as the pioneer of the use of ultrasound in obstetrics.

Nursing worldwide owes virtually everything to the work of Florence Nightingale, who was also undoubtedly among the very first persons to understand the importance of audit in medicine and the need to measure healthcare outcomes (before Dr Ernest Codman came along in the USA).  Dame Cicely Saunders pioneered the modern practice of palliative care and founded the modern hospice movement. Birth Control owes a great deal to its champion, Dr Marie Stopes.

And in more recent times, Alec Jeffreys invented DNA fingerprinting and Ian Wilmut and colleagues accomplished the first cloning of a whole animal ("Dolly the Sheep"), while the codification of “clinical governance” by Sir Liam Donaldson and colleagues has formed the most solid and powerful of foundations on which to build a healthcare system that is safe, fit for purpose and professional in ethos. 

Lastly, does anyone think that the world wide web and the internet are not important to modern medicine?  Sir Timothy Berners-Lee is universally regarded as the man who started the whole thing off. 

It all adds up to “not a bad CV”, and QHA Trent is perhaps a little proud of having the shoulders of such giants available to it to stand on as it seeks to move forward.