Dave Bunting

2020 was a difficult year for all with the Covid-19 pandemic having the greatest impact on our health service in many years, not to mention the negative effects is has had on the education of children and young people and the lasting effect it will have on businesses and our economy. Never in recent years has the health service had to learn to adapt so quicky and to such a great extent. When I wrote the last editorial of 2020, I hoped that we might by now be seeing some positive effects of widespread coronavirus vaccination. I feel this is starting to be the case and whilst there are fears that current vaccines may not offer full protection to the new Covid variants, as I write this, I have learned the UK has successfully vaccinated over 12 million of its most vulnerable people and looks to be able to reach its target of having offered a first vaccine dose to all of its highest risk patients by mid-February. As we emerge from this era and find new ways of safely providing surgical care during the ongoing pandemic, day surgery units are going to play a huge part in restoring our elective and urgent care services in an effort to keep up with ongoing demand and deal with the inevitable waiting list backlog that has developed in most specialties.

The BADS Virtual Conference will be taking place next month on Thursday 18^th March and will focus on how day surgery can be used to recover elective surgery in the Covid-19 era. Importantly, it will be delivered free of charge to all current BADS members so please register by following the link on the BADS homepage: 

https://daysurgeryuk.net/

All presented material, including video recordings of invited speakers’ lectures and oral prize presentations, will be available online for participants to access free of charge for three months following the conference.

In this edition of JODS, three updated ‘How I do it’ day case guides are presented, this month with an orthopaedic theme. They include guides on Day Case Total Hip Replacement, Day Case Total Knee Replacement and Day Case Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction.

Please keep your submissions to the Journal coming in and remember – JODS still offers citable peer-reviewed publication with no author processing fees. Author guidelines and submission instructions can be found in this edition of the journal.