Mary Stocker

As only two months have passed since my last letter you might think that there would be little to report, however I am pleased to say that BADS Council are still beavering away and there are various new initiatives on the horizon. 

However  firstly, I am sad to report the recent death of one of our founding members and past presidents Dr Peter Simpson and am very grateful to Ian Jackson for his obituary which appears in this issue and for the huge contribution Peter made over many years to BADS.  May he rest in Peace. 

Peter worked tirelessly for our Association over many years and I think it is fitting as he was one of the pioneers of day surgery benchmarking that I can report two current initiatives which council are involved with around day surgery benchmarking. The first is the long awaited Model Hospital reporting tool which I am assured is now imminently to launch the day surgery compartment, benchmarking all hospitals within England for all procedures within the BADS Directory.  The second refers to the National Getting it Right First Time Programme (GIRFT). This is an initiative being led by NHS England and rolled out across a variety of specialties.  We are engaging with the teams to try to ensure that Day Surgery activity is a core component of all surgical GIRFT Programmes and those anaesthetists among you who have already had their GIRFT visit will know that day surgery activity is a large component of the anaesthetic GIRFT programme.  Hopefully this will continue to drive day surgery performance across the country as it becomes a key component of this important benchmarking activity.

Council are continuing to look at opportunities for developing a day surgery accreditation programme.  Jo Marsdon is leading this for us and I am delighted that she has made significant inroads with the Royal College of Anaesthetists accreditation programme and other accreditation organisations such that we are beginning to progress this key aspect of our work.

Following the interest sparked at our last conference about day surgery joint replacements we organised a sell out one day meeting in collaboration with Healthcare Conferences in September. There were some inspirational presentations from the teams from Northumberland and Hull which left us all feeling “why not”?  We are hoping to run a second event in the spring. Watch this space. For those of you North of the Border, myself and Jo Marsden will be visiting the Grampian and Tayside Health boards to support the launch of their day surgery programmes later this month and we hope to plan a one day day surgery conference in Edinburgh in the spring – there is certainly a real desire for change in Scotland and its quite exciting watching your programmes develop.

As I write this it is bonfire night and I can hear the fireworks across the bay of Torbay, this will therefore be my last letter of 2018 so I wish you a Holy Advent, Happy Christmas and very successful 2019!