News from the Director’s Office - September 2016

As I settle into to my new role at NCR I’m struck by the dedication of the folks who work here and the nature of our unsung heroes. Practically speaking the work of NCR can be summed up into two main areas of expertise, data collection and data use. From the beginning I planned to go on tour to visit all our Tumour Registration Officers (TROs) working removed from NCR home base in Cork. Travelling around my newly adopted home land is an important way of understanding how data collection is done at NCR.

In my estimation, TROs are the epitome of unsung heroes “persons who make a substantive yet generally unrecognized contribution“. As is often the case, the work of unsung heroes has a ripple effect. In the case of NCR without our TROs there would be no national cancer data, without the data there would be no NCR. Without NCR there would be no comprehensive information on cancer in Ireland. A void that would impact cancer control, health policy and all of us who are, have been, know, known or will be a cancer patient in Ireland.

News from the Director’s Office this month is an expression of gratitude and an attempt to shed a little light on the important of role of data collection. We are lucky to have hospitals Ireland-wide that welcome our TROs and find ways to accommodate them within their infrastructure. This is not always, however, easy for the hospital, TROs and/or NCR to manage. As I embark on my visits I want to take a moment to say thank you to the hospitals and TROs for their contribution to making cancer registration in Ireland a success.