Professor Colette Cowan:

In recent years, diagnostics have developed well. We were fortunate to put new specialist registrars who are senior registrars, on a training programme. There are nine of them, with that number increasing to 13. They do a great deal of work in the diagnostics realm. A large amount of diagnostics is done in the region. We have installed a second MRI machine, which also serves GPs in terms of access to CAT scans and other diagnostics. These registrars do a great deal of work every day and their numbers have increased. In the past month, three of them have retired at consultant level, which has left us needing to replace those posts.