Staff profiles
Tom Boswell
Gastroenterologist and clinical lead bowel screening for Taranaki
The implementation of the National Bowel Screening Programme (NBSP) provides our endoscopy unit the opportunity to review systems and processes we use to provide care to all patients undergoing endoscopy procedures. This is a large piece of work with involvement of teams across many clinical and non-clinical departments, and requires integration with primary care providers.
Bowel screening is the expected standard of care in developed countries in 2021, and its introduction to Taranaki later this year will be a positive health care initiative for our population.
I started working as a General Physician and Gastroenterologist at Taranaki DHB in March 2020, and moved into the position of Clinical Lead Bowel Screening in September 2020.
In this role I’m helping to develop policies and procedures related to bowel screening, and provide information and education to all those who will be involved in running the programme. I have also been involved in implementing quality improvement and productivity initiatives in the unit which will help to catch up our current backlog of patients on the waiting list and create capacity for the projected increase in demand that bowel screening will bring.
Once the NBSP is rolled out in Taranaki I will be responsible for ensuring that participants receive appropriate and high quality care within an acceptable time-frame.
Prior to Taranaki DHB, I worked as a gastroenterologist in Hawke’s Bay for five years and was a bowel screening colonoscopist for 15 months. While working there I developed areas of interest and conducted research into gender bias in the selection of the New Zealand gastroenterology trainees, system-based approaches to improving endoscopy unit efficiency and productivity, and continuous quality improvement in colonoscopy.
For my overseas Fellowship in 2013, I spent 18 months at NHS Lothian working in the Scottish Liver Transplant Unit at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and in the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Unit at Edinburgh’s Western General Hospital.