Mary Stocker

I am writing this as preparations for our Annual Scientific Meeting in Southport are well underway. Once again our Conference Secretary has pulled together an inspiring programme which promises a wide variety of topics pertaining to day surgery, including day case neurosurgery and emergency day surgery. If you have not done so already do have a look at the programme on our website; at time of writing there are still places available should you wish to come along and have not already registered.

It has been a busy few months for BADS since I last wrote. We have, in collaboration with Healthcare Conferences, run two one-day conferences, the first focusing on Day Surgery Emergency Surgery. A longer report of this meeting is contained in the Journal, but I would like to thank all our external speakers and BADS Council members for delivering an outstanding meeting which stimulated much discussion and excellent delegate feedback. There is no doubt that having pushed the frontiers of elective surgery over the past 10 years emergency surgery is the next significant challenge for BADS and the work of some units across the country is truly inspiring. If this is an area which your trust is either not yet embracing or finding it difficult to tackle do consider coming to this conference when we re-run it on November 23rd. Last week we ran a third one day meeting on day surgery breast cancer surgery. This is an example of procedures where there is huge variation across the country, the best units achieving day-case rates of 90% with others rates below 10%. Once again we had inspiring presentations and very fruitful delegate engagement in discussions. There is no doubt that by learning from centres of best practice we should all be able to transform our day case outcomes.

Our representatives on the International Association of Ambulatory Surgery (IAAS) have just returned from the 12th International Congress in Beijing. I would like to remind all BADS members that you are members of the IAAS; a link to their website, newsletter, journal and congress details are available on the resources area of the BADS website. I would also like to take this opportunity on behalf of BADS to congratulate Professor Doug McWhinnie, a previous President of BADS, on being appointed President-Elect of IAAS. I would also like to thank Dr Ian Jackson who is standing down shortly as one of the BADS representatives on the IAAS committee. Ian has been a huge advocate of BADS with the IAAS over the years and his work internationally has hugely enhanced the reputation of our national organisation. Ian is irreplaceable, but Mr Kian Chin, our own President-Elect, is game for the challenge and I am sure will prove himself an able successor to Ian. He was voted onto the IAAS General Assembly in Beijing and will, with Doug McWhinnie, act as our representative to the IAAS.

I want to finish by announcing an exciting new venture. Following a survey of our members reported in the previous edition of JODS and detailed discussion by council we have decided to develop a JODS app. This will enable future editions of JODS to be produced for smart phones, tablets or websites. We are in the process of developing this and anticipate that the next edition of JODS will be electronic. The times they are a changing! Do write in and tell us what you think.

That just leaves me to say I hope to see as many of you as possible in Southport in June for two days of stimulating education and networking opportunities.