It has been a frustrating 2 months for anyone trying to run any of the phase 1 PET services. There have been multiple production issues with the one company who supplies FDG under the contract. I know it will never happen but it would be good if a senior manager from that company could talk to one of our patients who is not well, has to travel a significant distance and finds fasting difficult after his PET was cancelled 3 times. I think as doctors we find it difficult to explain to non-medical commercial people the various ways the actions (or non-actions) of their company causes distress and suffering. Our medical director was forced to issue a letter stating only the most urgent patients such as lymphoma review and those needing FDG for immediate surgery should be referred. However the real blame lies with NHS England in the way they set up the contract and run it without having an understanding of production resilience and contingency planning. Finally giving 45% of the UK provision in a monopoly to a simple company was always going to end badly. At least the government has learnt some lessons and not awarded any post Brexit ferry deals to companies with no ferries using ports too small for current ferries.

A different tack, after 35 years’ service in the NHS I have entered the world of being a patient. I now know what it is like to wait 4 weeks for a 10 minute GP referral. Then you head off with your signed bit of paper to Boots, everyone waits 15 minutes though that can be an 8 minute, 15 minutes (yippee) or a foot hurting 40 minutes, 15 minutes. It is a good thing I am semi-retired there would be no way I could do all this waiting if I actually had a job or a life. Now I am waiting for the hospital appointment letter day after day I get bills but no letter. Surely in the days of email and texts for most patients this could be done more efficiently but then we could not be called patients anymore because we would not have to spend endless hours waiting.

The other message is, if a patient or carer comes to nuclear medicine and is a bit grumpy, they have probably had real problems getting to you through this convoluted referral system.  Remember the old adage of nuclear medicine, Be nice. Be kind.

See you all in a few weeks in Oxford

Dr John Buscombe

BNMS President