Well it’s almost the end of the year and almost the end of the transition period. Many of us were involved in a videoconference with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) a couple of weeks ago. It has been decided that radiopharmaceuticals will all be flown after 1^st January 2021 in and it does seem that this time there has been some planning. Issues still exist transhipping product to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, North and South West England but hopefully there should not be too many delays. There is some hope that new drugs and therapeutics can receive MHRA approval at the same time as the EMA, except Northern Ireland that will continue with EMA rules. Maybe we will have to go to Belfast not just for a conference but also some nuclear medicine scan and treatments. There will certainly be an increase in the costs of delivery and whilst NHS England accepted this will be the case but refused to say they would cover these cost increases. We have all been warned. As it is expected the volume capacity of travel between Calais and Dover will decrease by 40% in January so maybe no salad for January.

As I write this blog, we are in the middle of the second English lockdown and my thoughts go out to all of you with children. It must be hard to keep them busy and interested with no where to go and the weather being a bit cold and rainy. For us old people things do not change much if we are in lockdown or not though it is frustrating being unable to visit family. I hope that this will be over soon and we can see family and friends at Christmas though remember the golden rules “wash hands, wear a mask and keep your distance”. Maybe at last there is also good news concerning vaccines.

I have decided to invent a new disease and that is “metastatic zooming”. In the “old days” as we now call the time before COVID it was possible to avoid meetings by physically being somewhere else. You could be in clinic, on holiday or in another country. Now we live in zoom world and no one is allowed to go anywhere all this becomes impossible. It is pretty much impossible to say you are not available for a zoom meeting. Those that love meeting can call them at any time for any length knowing you cannot say you are not available. However, some hospitals are coming to our rescue. Many hospital computers do not have cameras and some have no microphones and of course you are not allowed to plug your own camera and microphone in. One hospital I work in is brilliant. They have put zoom on the computer but this machine has no sound no camera and no microphone and to add to the feeling of isolation no mobile phone signal. Of course, you could use Teams as part of nhs.net but most of us have noticed that since the recent upgrade nhs.net has become almost unusable. It can take 30 minutes to write a 2 line email and the Teams part hardly works at all. Of concern to us nhs.net automatically deletes any email from the BNMS so if you have not had any emails from us in the past month please send a alternate non nhs.net email to the BNMS office so we can use that. Finally another surprise is that on shared computers when you log onto nhs.net with your username and password you do not get your email in box but those of random previous user.

Finally, and most importantly we are getting some good traction in our campaign to ensure nuclear medicine technologists become registered health care professionals. Many of you have written to your local MPs and obtained cross-party support for these plans. The prize goes to Newcastle which has recruited all the cities MPs both Conservative and Labour to support nuclear medicine technologist registration. If you have not received your email asking you to write to your MP then please check with the BNMS office they have your up to date (non nhs.net) email address. This is an important step and will help with professional progression of our members and being able to pressure the Home Office to agree nuclear medicine technologists is a shortage profession. It is totally illogical that art therapists are registered and not our brilliant nuclear medicine technologists.

Dr John Buscombe

BNMS President