Page 57 - BHTA 100 years

M“emories from... Colin Peacock
As new graduates were fed into the clinical environment, an inequality of
quali cation between the Scottish Honour Degree graduates and the rest of the UK was recognised. This resulted in the ve year HND course moving to a four-year Honours degree course based in Salford with graduates able to practice in both Prosthetics and Orthotics.
At that time, there were two representative professional organisations. Graduates from Strathclyde mostly joined the Association for Prosthetists and Orthotists (APO), graduates from London and Salford joined BIST.
The next stage of professional recognition was to seek formal regulation by an independent body who held and could withdraw, the licence to practice. Two options were available: The Council for Professions Supplementary to Medicine (CPSM) or, creating an independent route speci cally for P&O. The latter proved to be prohibitively expensive and so CPSM was chosen.
As a condition of entry: CPSM demanded that there could only be one professional association and demanded that BIST and APO merged. Whilst most members
of BIST were at peace with their association with BSTA, members of APO were adamant that the new association could not under any circumstances be tainted by connection with the trade. This view began to take hold and no compromise could be found resulting in the formation of the British Association of Prosthetists and Orthotists (BAPO) and, with the departure of all prosthetist and orthotist members, the eventual demise of BIST. This was a dif cult time for everyone who had worked so hard for BIST.
It was however the start of a new era attracting massive energy from the newly formed and youthful BAPO. At their rst ‘Scienti c meeting and AGM’ they attracted over 1,000 delegates from a total working population of approximately 770 P&O practitioners. The profession was accepted as a member of CPSM ” and apart from changes in names and faces, this is where we are today.
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