We have just had a very successful meeting in Dublin with the Irish Nuclear Medicine Association. We had a sell-out meeting with about 50 delegates from the UK, a handful from overseas and about 90 from Ireland. The meeting’s theme was musculoskeletal disease and there was a variety of talks from radiologists, nuclear medicine physicians and radiologists and radiographers/technologists. There was an additional workshop on PET imaging using F-18 fluviclovine. The meeting was jointly organised by the President of the INMA Dr Martin O’Connell and our very own Dr Richard Graham. The final talk by Prof David Hevey from Trinity College Dublin concerned how non-scientifically trained people perceive risk. For example a third of adults do not know what 40% means with the best guess being that it means one in 4. Also that the majority of adults think that 5 out of 100 is a bigger number than 1 in 10. This may have a real impact on how our patients understand the kind of risks we discuss concerning nuclear medicine imaging and therapy but it does seem using percentages may not be useful and a 10 in a million risk will be seen by patients as risker than a 1 in 100,000 risk.

Dublin proved to be the perfect host city and showed itself to be a dynamic, diverse and optimistic city. The general mood in Ireland seemed so different than we have in the UK where we seem to live in times of uncertainty. Hopefully we will know our future soon so that we can plan ahead but I do hope the technetium shortage we suffered at the beginning of the week is not a portent for what lies ahead.

Thinking ahead, the work on our new website is moving ahead with transfer of data from the old to new system being done systematically. Front page layout and designs are being but together to give our society’s window to the world a welcoming and fresh face. You may all be asked at some time to provide content please respond positively. A massive thanks to Charlotte, Caroline and Lee for all their hard work in this area.

Remember to get writing those abstracts for our spring meeting in April that January deadline will soon be upon us and we want to make sure we have all your best work to share with us in Oxford.

Dr John Buscombe

BNMS President