President's Jan 2023 Newsletter
from Jo Cresswell
31 January 2023
(Last updated: 4 Mar 2024 11:49)
Good news!
Congratulations to all our BAUS medal winners for 2023. We will celebrate with you at the BAUS Annual Meeting from 19 to 21 June 2023. The recipients are listed below:
- St Peter's Medal - James N'Dow
- St Paul's Medal - Rajeev TP
- BAUS Gold Medal - Abhay Rane
- Karl Storz Harold Hopkins Golden Telescope Award - Grant Stewart
- John Anderson Award - Suzanne Biers
- BAUS Certificate of Distinction - Charles Reynolds (of CJ Medical)
Huge congratulations also go to Ms Jyoti Shah (pictured below right), our Consultant colleague at Derby and Burton NHS Trust, who was awarded an MBE in the King’s New Year’s Honours List for her charity work.
Forthcoming opportunities for members
Very soon we will start the process to nominate a BAUS Secretary Elect and Treasurer Elect with elections in the Spring. Our strategic priorities will feed into these roles, with the BAUS Secretary focussing on the Education workstream and the BAUS Treasurer focussing on the Membership workstream.
All BAUS Trustees, we would be delighted to talk to potential candidates. We are a friendly bunch who work hard and are passionate about all things BAUS. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with myself, Ian Pearce, Joe Philip, Nick Watkin, Iqbal Shergill (contact details via BAUS website). As ever we are keen to encourage diversity in our Trustees; we would particularly like to see nominations from regions under-represented in BAUS leadership, and from small to medium-sized units. Most of the Trustees' meetings are virtual, so distance is less problematic than previously.
Jonathan Glass will be completing his very successful first term of office as our representative on the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons of England this Spring. Jonathan is eligible to stand for election for a further four years and has confirmed he wishes to do so. In line with regional Council elections, we agreed with the College that we would run a national re-selection process at the end of the first term of office and we will, therefore, soon be inviting nominations for this role. This election, as BAUS Representative, is separate to and distinct from the RCS England elections currently ongoing.
Please visit The Urology Foundation website for details of opportunities, including the Malcolm Coptcoat Travelling Fellowship (closing date 3 February 2023), and for opportunities for bursaries for urologists, trainees and allied health professionals. Also look out for ways of fundraising for TUF.
Strategic developments
In Summer 2022, we embarked on a review of BAUS Strategy for 2023 - 2026. A strategic plan will encompass two Presidential tenures, with Ian Pearce and myself working together. We began the strategic review with a survey of members; rich discussion then took place with a group representing all parts of the organisation. Trustees and BAUS Executive have carefully worked through all of the brainstorming to identify which projects are important to the most members. We reviewed the priority areas with BAUS Council earlier this month, and we will develop a more detailed program of work in the next few months.
Our Widening Participation group goes from strength to strength with Susan Willis as Chair, and BAUS Vice-President Ian Pearce supporting. We continue to develop a picture of who our members are. Shown below are some infographics of the data so far:
Please do look at your personal profile in My BAUS on the website and spend a minute entering your data. The protected characteristics data are completely anonymous, and the BAUS team cannot see your individual data. Understanding our membership composition helps us to shape representation at our meetings, and to assess how effective our Widening Participation initiatives are.
One surrogate marker of our progress is our elections. We welcome the newly elected members of our Section committees and the new Chairs. It is so heartening to see the number of candidates who stand for election. This takes courage and commitment. For those of you not elected this time around, there will be many more opportunities coming your way. Our BAUS community is built on the goodwill of its active members. Thank you to all those committee members who are demitting office. As a previous Chair of the Section of Oncology, I would love to understand why so few female colleagues stand for election for this Section. Also, a quick reminder that you can only vote for, or stand for an election if you are a Section member (check your MyBAUS profile if you are not sure what Sections you have joined).
Our SAS@BAUS Group has been very active over the last 18 months. Following discussions with the group's Chair, Nitin Shrotri, Vice-Chair, Khaled Hosny and SAS Council representative, Siraj Natalwala, we have decided to put together a small working group who will work with BAUS Executive team over the next 12 months to develop a Section of SAS and LED. In the next week, we will ask for expressions of interest. This group is very diverse in all respects, including career aspirations. Some colleagues will be seeking to progress to CESR applications, other colleagues wish to continue to deliver urological care in their current roles, with development of their practice. Please do consider participating. We would very much like to see diversity of experience, geography and a mix of international and UK medical graduates.
Our Digital and Communications Group will be driving forward under the leadership of Lisa Dodgshon. A team of BAUS members, representing all stages of career development and a range of IT experience, will be developing the next iteration of BAUS digital resources. We hope to have a preliminary BAUS Digital product for you all to try out in the Spring.
In the near future, we will be seeking your views about the journals that are included with your BAUS membership. The Journal of Clinical Urology (JCU) is funded by BAUS. The British Journal of Urology International (BJUI) and BJUI Knowledge modules are purchased as a block subscription for BAUS members. We want to understand better how you use these resources – both as an educational stockpile and in publishing your own work or that of our colleagues in training.
Regional BAUS
In 2022, I was privileged to participate in the regional meetings of eight of our 16 regions (South West, the Irish Republic, East Midlands, Yorks & Humber, North of England, Northern Ireland, South London and KSS). Ian Pearce and I are looking forward to many more vsits in 2023. Let us know directly, or through your BAUS Regional Representative, if you would like us to join your regional meeting.
A new initiative this year is the TUF/BAUS “Best of the Best” regional paper event on 21 June 2023 at the Annual Meeting, working in partnership with The Urology Foundation who are kindly providing a £500 bursary for regional paper presenter and a prize for the overall winner.
We enter 2023 with some trepidation, as the wider NHS challenges impact on us all. No doubt there will be uncertainty and difficulties to navigate. The cost of living is a further pressure on our organisation as well as for us as individuals. It is a time when we may all reflect on where our priorities lie, and BAUS will be doing the same. I am convinced that we are in a better place because of our network of colleagues, whatever comes our way.
Thank you for making BAUS the amazing community that we are.
Forthcoming calendar events
All forthcoming events can be viewed on the BAUS calendar but the events listed below deserve your special attention:
Regional elections
Look out for regional elections in the North East and KSS in April.
Clinical studies and audits
The BAUS Section of Endourology seeks to understand how ureteric stents are tracked. How does your department avoid issues of forgotten stents?
A brief questionnaire has been circulated to members and data entry closes at midnight on 1 February 2023.
A patient experience study of cystectomy outcomes.
Lead – Jon Aning on behalf the BAUS Section of Oncology. Data entry closes at the end of March 2023.
An audit of the quality of TURBT and the impact of audit on quality improvement.
Lead – Kevin Gallagher on behalf of the BURST collaborative. Please ensure your department completes the prospective phase by the end of February 2023.
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