Dear BHS Members,
For our November news update, I would like to highlight:
The BHS Annual Meeting 2021
It is self-evident that the second wave of COVID 19 is upon us, and over the last month the governments of our home nations have announced a series of restrictions, culminating most recently with the announcement of a month-long lockdown in England. Clearly the events management industry is one of those most significantly affected by the governments’ restrictions, and indeed they have ruled out large face-to-face gatherings until at least the end of March 2021. This means that our planned dates for BHS 2021 cannot go ahead and we must make alternative arrangements. Although our collective familiarity and capability with online meetings has increased significantly over the last few months, we still believe that there is a real appetite amongst BHS members for a face-to-face Annual Scientific Meeting and therefore we are continuing with plans for a physical meeting, but with a fall back strategy should this be impossible.
Given the seasonal influence on COVID 19 transmission rates, we are going to delay the BHS Annual Scientific Meeting until June 2021, when hopefully the COVID-19 rates will have fallen sufficiently to allow face-to-face meetings to go ahead. The advice that we have received from the events management industry indicates that June 2021 would be the soonest that we are likely to be able to hold a physical meeting. However, we don’t think that we can delay the meeting beyond June, because of factors such as summer school holidays, so if we can’t meet at that time then we will convert the conference to a virtual one. In order to prepare for such an eventuality, we will be recording all material ahead of the face-to-face conference; these recordings will create a useful archive of our meeting, and one to which we can refer back in the future. The abstract submission for BHS 2021 is now open and can be accessed HERE
In contrast to the Annual Scientific Meeting, we don’t think that the Annual General Meeting of the BHS can or should be delayed because there are important administrative tasks that must be completed for the well-being of our Society, such as the election of new officers, the financial review, a review of the Society’s strategy and the handover between presidents. We have therefore asked our events management partners to quote for an online meeting of the Society’s membership, to be held on the evening of Thursday 4th March 2021, and we have specified that the meeting should have the facility for live interaction between attendees and for members to be able to vote in confidence on the issues discussed. We will follow up with more details of the AGM in the coming months.
BHS Instructional Course – Call for Expressions of Interest
Following on from the hugely successful inaugural BHS Instructional Course, held at BHS 2020 in Newport, the Education Committee are currently drawing up plans for next year’s course, which will take place on Friday 4th March 2021. The event will be a virtual offering and the Education Committee are hoping to utilise the wealth of knowledge and experience among the BHS membership, inviting members who would like to teach on the course to come forward. The themes for next year’s course will be hip-related trauma and revision hip surgery, so if these match you own areas of expertise and interest, and if you would like to take part, we would love to hear from you! To get involved, please contact the Education Committee chair, Vikas Khanduja, by emailing him at vikaskhanduja@aol.com
“Coping with COVID” Webinar Series
Many of you will be aware that last week saw the first in a new series of webinars entitled “Coping with COVID.” These webinars are a result of collaboration between the BHS and the British Orthopaedic Directors Society (BODS), the BOA and BASK, and the aim is to address various issues that members of our societies face in the second surge of COVID-19, and beyond. The format of the webinars is designed to be as interactive as possible, with some presentation material, followed by time available for discussion of attendees’ questions. At this first webinar we received presentations on the latest data from UK elective orthopaedics; elective operating, the BOA position and a London perspective; using data to build elective resilience; and a description of how the second surge is unfolding in Nottingham. These presentations were followed by a wide-ranging series of questions and answers and the webinar was recorded, so if you missed it but would like to watch it on demand then the recording can be viewed HERE. The BHS will continue to collaborate with the BOA and the other Specialist Societies to produce further webinars in this series.
British Hip Society Best Practice Standards
You may recall that in the September monthly update we announced a BHS programme to produce a series of reference standards documents, which we hope will cover the full gamut of activities we undertake in delivering primary and revision total hip replacement services to our patients. The scope of the project is broad, but we will be breaking it down into small reference documents, each dealing with a specific area of practice and each undertaken by a separate team, so that work on each area can progress in parallel. In this way we hope to deliver on the broader project more quickly than if it was undertaken by a smaller team of individuals. We have previously invited members to participate in writing these reference standards and we are grateful to those who have already volunteered. If you have not yet come forward but would like to get involved in this project, please email your expression of interest to our Secretary, Matt Wilson, at brithipsocsec@gmail.com
A Couple of Other Items
There are a couple of additional things to which I would like to draw your attention. Firstly, I would like to remind you that this coming week will see the final webinar in the series on Complex and Revision Hip Replacement Networks. It will take place on Wednesday 4th November 18:30 – 19:30, and is entitled “Making Networks Successful.” In this webinar we will be launching a piece of work on defining complexity in revision hip replacement, as well as hearing from two different models of successful networks, from Merseyside and from the East Midlands. We very much hope that you will be able to join us for that, which you can do by clicking HERE
Finally, I’d just like to alert you to look out for our forthcoming BHS Autumn Newsletter, which should be arriving in your inboxes shortly. I’d like to thank everyone that has contributed to the Newsletter and special thanks to our secretary, Matt Wilson, for all his work on pulling that together.
I will write again next month, but in the meantime I hope that you, your families and your patients remain well in the coming weeks.
With best wishes,
Jonathan
Jonathan Howell
President, British Hip Society.