President's Letter JODS 32.4

Figure 1.

Jo Marsden

By the time this edition of JODS goes online, our current BADS administrator, Nicola Adams, will be retiring from her role with us. It is a huge loss and she will be greatly missed, not only for the work she undertook but the gracious way she went about it. We celebrate our successes as a Council but couldn’t have functioned without her. I hope you will all join me in wishing Nicola happy times with family and friends away from our office.

Our membership continues to grow, now exceeding 650, this combined with continued support from our Strategic Alliance Partners, Caspe Health Knowledge Systems (CHKS) and firming up of collaborations with other organisations makes me optimistic for the future of the charity in achieving its aims. BADS is now being acknowledged more widely as a source for provision of advice and insight about developing and refining day surgery pathways by others. In keeping with this, I am pleased to announce that we now have British Orthopaedic Association representation on the BADS Council from Professors Sarah Stapley and Fares Haddad.

The programme for our 2023 annual conference next June at Glasgow Caledonian University is taking shape with some excellent speakers being lined up. Our repertoire and success of one-day virtual meetings is expanding, with more topics being added and increasing number of delegates. Work continues with our online publications, updated editions of the Day Case Laparoscopic Surgery and Paediatric Day Surgery handbooks are in the pipeline along with ‘Setting up an Upper limb Regional Anaesthesia Service’, which will be a joint publication with Regional Anaesthesia UK (RAUK). In addition to adding interventional radiology to the BADS Directory of Procedures, it is planned to expand its content to include specialities not already covered, ensuring it will be as comprehensive as possible. This will take time and members will be notified when updates and new sections occur. The BADS Directory remains the definitive day surgery benchmark and is the reference for the day surgery metrics on the Model Health System https://model.nhs.uk.

BADS continues its advisory role with GiRFT and has recently reviewed and endorsed the Day Surgery Discectomy Pathway https://www.gettingitrightfirsttime.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Spinal-Surgery-Day-Surgery-PLDD.pdf. Even if your area of speciality or day surgery pathway exposure doesn’t involve spinal surgery, it is a great example of practical rethinking and pathway mapping to deliver safe day surgery. It’s a good read and easy to understand (and I’m a breast surgeon [retired]). Since my last JODS letter, BADS has been invited to be a stakeholder and participated in the first working group meeting for the development of an accelerated programme for Surgical First Assistant (SFA) by The NHS Scotland Academy. This is a great development and chimes with BADS evolving collaborations with the Association of Perioperative Practitioners (AfPP) and the perioperative Care Collaboration (PCC).

BADS will be at The Future Surgery 22 Show, ExCel, London on the 15^th and 16^th November. We have a trade stand and will be running a session on ‘Solutions for perceived Challenges in Day Surgery’ with Council members Kim Russon, Rachel Tibble, Rachel Morris and Karen Harries, chaired by myself. If you are attending, it would a pleasure to meet you so do make yourself known.

Please continue to submit any questions about day surgery issues to bads@bads.co.uk. The next edition of JODS is scheduled for February 2023. At the time of writing, it is only 46 sleeps to Christmas. Have a great festive holiday and a happy new year to all.