President's Letter JODS 33.2

Jo Marsden

I’m pleased to announce that registration is still open for our 2023 annual conference at Glasgow Caledonian University on the 29^th and 30^th of June. All the programme and house-keeping details are available on our website (https://bads.co.uk/conference/bads-2023-conference/). It is a great opportunity to network and realise away from the current, seemingly never-ending pressures at work, what a fantastic job you do in delivering day surgery. We have had many abstract submissions covering a diverse range of day surgery topics, thank you to everyone who has contributed towards this. Abstracts accepted for oral and poster submission will be published in the Journal of One-Day Surgery. When you register for the meeting, don’t forget to sign up for the complimentary Ceilidh dance at the conference dinner and remember to bring your dancing shoes. We will also be announcing the results of our Council elections at the annual conference.

Our annual programme of one-day virtual meetings run in conjunction with Healthcare Conferences UK (HCUK) continues to expand. Delegate feedback from 2022 was excellent. Ninety-six percent of delegates stated they would recommend the meetings they attended to a colleague and 91% stated their attendance would have a positive impact on their patients experience of care. New meeting topics added in 2022 included ‘The Role of the Day Surgery Team’, ‘Day-case Foot and Ankle Surgery’ and ‘Day-case Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery’. This year we have added day-case endocrine surgery and urology to the repertoire and in 2024 this will be expanded to include day-case orthopaedic trauma and day case paediatric surgery. These events are updated regularly on the event page of the BADS website. BADS members have a discounted rate for these meetings (£100+VAT) and are eligible for a 20% discount for other HCUK events. Again, details, including discount codes, can be found in the events section of our website.

BADS continues its collaboration with Getting it Right First Time (GiRFT), currently advising on the surgical hub accreditation programme, Right Procedure Right Place and further development of day surgery metrics for The Model Hospital System.

In an exciting new development, we have established a joint Working Party with the Association for Perioperative Practice (AfPP) on the development of recommendations for core competencies in peri-operative day surgery practice. This will fill a national gap and aims to support staff training and appraisal in day surgery, regardless of the model of care delivery, or whether the healthcare setting is NHS or private. It is an example of BADS responding to feedback from our members. It is planned to launch the recommendations at our annual conference in June. Two further documents are in preparation about core competencies for paediatric day surgery and specialist competencies for day surgery. The intention is to publish these by the end of this year.

To all members, please continue to contact BADS Council for any advice or support, we are happy to help. (bads@bads.co.uk). We also welcome information about successful day surgery experience, be it success in implementation of a pathway recommended in our Directory of Procedures, or safely pushing the boundaries of day surgery care. BADS has now started to deliver a monthly online newsletter to all members that will provide updates about all our events, news items relevant to day surgery and invitations on how to become more involved in our activities.

This is my last JODS letter as President as I will be standing down at the annual conference In June. It has been a privilege and pleasure to undertake the role over the last two years. Thank you to all members for supporting BADS and I’m looking forward to engaging with everyone when we all meet up in a few weeks’ time.