There is as ever a lot going on in the world of day surgery and hopefully you will be able to make it to one of our events over the next few months.  Council have been busy collaborating with a number of organisations to develop a varied education programme for our members. In March we are running an event in collaboration with NHS Scotland in Edinburgh, this is a varied programme covering a number of recent innovations within day surgery and is open to all not only our Scottish members. The programme features no less than 4 BADS presidents, past, present and future!  In April we are once again supporting an event run by Healthcare Conferences focusing on Hip Surgery. There is a strong day surgery component to the programme. In May once again with Healthcare Conferences we are running an event focusing on innovations in day surgery for general surgery. May also gives you the opportunity to see a little sunshine by travelling with us to the beautiful city of Porto in Portugal, between sampling the local beverage you can attend what looks like a stunning programme at the Congress of the International Association of Ambulatory Surgery. June of course is the highlight of our year - our own Conference. This year is the 30^th Anniversary of the founding of BADS and will be our 30^th Conference. To mark this we have decided to run the event in London at the Royal Society of Medicine.  Hopefully this will be easy for many of you to access and registration is now open as is the opportunity to submit abstracts so get your juniors completing those projects and writing them up ready for the March closing date. We are excited to announce that we will be launching our Conference App this year which we are hoping will help us continue to strive towards being more environmentally responsible and ensure that all our delegates are able to navigate the conference events with ease.  In April, June and October we are collaborating with the orthopaedic team from Northumberland to run a series of one day conferences focussing on enhanced recovery and implementation of day surgery pathways for arthroplasty surgery.  Watching a patient walk out of the hospital only a few hours after undergoing a hip replacement is truly remarkable, a reflection of the teamwork and professionalism that you all strive to bring to the units you work in and the patients you care for.

If that is not enough to keep you busy applications are now open for our Education Grant and details are available on the website.  Council are also currently working on a variety of projects including revitalising our website, development of an accreditation programme for day surgery in association with HQIP and working together with the teams from “Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) to ensure that day surgery is prominent within their surgical programmes.

I hope to see you at one of our events in the next few months and remember we will be asking for all members to consider applying for a position on Council in the next few months, please do give this some consideration as this is your Association and the more people who get involved with its organisation the more we will evolve to meet your expectations.