New POGP Chair Katie Mann

16 November 2016 (Last updated: 11 May 2020 10:59)

Katie Mann was voted POGPs new Chair at POGP Conference 2016. She has been involved with POGP for many years and we feel she will make a wonderful new chair.

We extend our thanks to Prof. Doreen McClurg who stepped down as our current Chair at Conference 2016. She has made many dynamic changes, not least of which was our re-brand and re-name from ACPWH to POGP. She will continue for the next year as vice-chair of POGP.

And now a message from our new Chair, Katie Mann.

Dear Members

I am introducing myself as your new Chair as I was voted into post by the POGP executive at the AGM in Liverpool last week.

I qualified from Salford in 1989 so you can work out how old I am and started work at Southport Promenade Hospital as I fiercely wanted to work with spinal cord injured patients. Career-wise, things didn’t go to plan (I didn’t get the static senior 2 post) and so I had a baby. Coming back to work after mat leave I was given the maternity wards to cover as I understood the patients. Not having a clue about obs and gynae, I took a course. Then another, completing the UEL continence course in 1994. And as is the way with most of us, here I am 22 years later.

Clinically I work for the NHS half of the week running a dedicated pelvic floor clinic. I treat men and women with bladder, bowel , sexual dysfunction pelvic pain and prolapse. The other half of the week I work for a private hospital within the Ramsay group, seeing the same type of patients.

I joined ACPWH, as it was then, 10 years ago, with the instruction from the then-Chair Pauline that I wouldn’t have to do much for the first year, just observe and take it all in. But within 2 months I was the secretary as the previous incumbent was taken ill. I have been with the committee as secretary, vice chair and public relations officer, seeing through many changes including the employment of Fitwise as a management company, the change of name to POGP, the co-joining with CPPC, the setting up of a national conference organising committee and many other exciting projects.

Technology has changed the way we live so much in the past 10 years, there was a struggle to accept email as the main form of communication with members not all that long ago, and here we are with Facebook, a website and Twitter account dedicated to POGP.

I am meeting with the exec at the beginning of December to discuss our plans for the future. With an eye on the past and rich history of Pelvic, Obstetric and Gynaecological Physiotherapy over the past 68 years, but also forward looking, I am very proud to have been given this opportunity.

Please feel free to contact me at k.mann@nhs.net or via Twitter @KatieMannPhysio apologies if I don’t reply immediately but clinical practice pays the bills!

Katie

Chair of POGP from November 2016