By the time you read this I will no longer be President of the BNMS and Richard will have taken up the mantle. I wish him every success for his term of office. Richard has previously been the BNMS Secretary and also President-Elect for 2 years so he is probably the best prepared President we have ever had.

In China it was said that the greatest wish was that we be saved from interesting times well clearly that has not been the case for my presidency. We have all lived through probably the most “interesting times” we will experience in our lives. It started with the divisive process of Brexit which left many of our colleagues feeling their contribution to our specialty and country was not fully appreciated. Just as Brexit seemed to be finally settling-down we were hit by the pandemic. I do not think many of us in March 2020 felt we would still be suffering at this present time. The general feeling was it would be over by Christmas not knowing then that for most of us Christmas would be cancelled. A few wise heads looked at the infection curves of the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic with waves of infection rolling round the globe and said this would not be over till 2022 at the earliest. However, at least we can see the end of it here in the UK.

Though, many of our nuclear medicine community have family in South Asia and look on with mixture of horror and helplessness as the infection rips through India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. I have many Facebook friends working in these countries and every day someone posts a relative has died. It is all too awful and we must remember the saying non one is safe until we are all safe.

We have learnt so many lessons over the last 2-3 years but most of all I think we have learnt we need to value and cherish each other. When we can finally meet together hopefully in Glasgow it will be so good to see each other in person.

It is normal at hand over for the President to say a few words of thanks to all those who have made the job workable and remind me of deadlines and what I need to do. Charlotte and Caroline have excelled in this role. Over the past 3 years a lot of work has proceeded to future proof our Society and make it fit and sustainable for the coming years. I had the opportunity of travelling to Nottingham and on a beautiful sunny day in April to share a thank you lunch in a riverside pub garden with Charlotte and Caroline. I am grateful every day for their enthusiasm and encouragement.

The President is just a team leader and the most active of that team are my fellow officers who in my term of office have been Sobhan, Jilly, Richard and Stewart. They have shared the burden of work that needs to be done often at short notice and have always been there to defend and expand the role of nuclear medicine. I think the profile of nuclear medicine is as high as it has ever been within the Department of Health, with Members of Parliament and the Royal Colleges. This has been a joint effort. I thank them all.

Much of the work is done in committees. Bev has led the Professional Standards Committee with efficiency over the past 3 years and turned it into a committee that does things and not just talks about things. Sabina led the Scientific and Education Committee but after passing this to Vineet and Drake became our Scientific Advisor and the first fruits was our COVID paper published in NMC this year. More is to come. The RTN committee has increased in importance under the leadership of Richard and Chris and our fight for technologists registration continues. They have scored a major success over employing non-UK technologists when needed. Long may they continue to thrive. Sarah, Charnie and Andy have been an invaluable link to the Medical Physics community as well as taking on battles concerning reimbursement and starting our mentoring service. A grateful thanks to all of these teams. We as a Society have been blessed with a great Council and many volunteers not on Council who represent us on a variety of Committees, thanks to you all.

Well, this is the end. The last of 37 Presidential blogs. I hope they were useful in giving you all a window onto what I was doing and my thoughts over the past 3 years.

Dr John Buscombe

BNMS Past-President