We have heard from Curium that the surcharge applied to radiopharmaceuticals has not been sufficient to cover the cost due the decreased amount ordered because of COVID-19. They will be returning to road delivery but will still need to charge the surcharge to cover this for the foreseeable future to pay for the airfreight costs they have incurred. The BNMS has written to Prof Powis, Medical Director at NHS England, to ask the NHS to cover this cost for trusts. We will let you know the response as soon as we hear it.

Demand on Nuclear Medicine Departments continue to rise as the bulge of cancer recovery is happening and I am aware that some departments are struggling to deliver with the perfect storm of sickness, isolation from covid contacts and summer annual leave. All we can do is to prioritise the most important studies and do our best. This will be a marathon not a sprint. We must protect ourselves and our teams from burnout. If we don’t our patients will suffer the most in the long term through diminished services.

ARSAC has agreed that virtual training can count towards recognised experience for an ARSAC licences. They have reviewed the experiences of virtual working from the pandemic and concluded that some training can be delivered remotely. They will be issuing guidance on this in 2022 with their net round of notes for guidance.

The autumn 2021 BNMS meeting programme has been finalised and the meeting is open for registration.  The content looks excellent with large array of international and national speakers. This 3-day event features the re-worked programme from the BNMS Annual Spring 2020 meeting which was cancelled. We have now delivered 2 virtual meetings and continue to iterate how we deliver these based on your feedback. I am confident this will be a really excellent virtual meeting and encourage you to register now.  I would like the Scientific & Education Committee ably led by Sabina Dizdarevic and Vineet Prakash who have delivered this.

I am sure many of you are currently grieving and transitioning through the Kubler Ross stages of dying with regard to the England Team’s defeat last night. I think we should reflect on their wonderful achievement of reaching their first international final in 55 years and reframe this as a great success. We in the nuclear medicine community have much to learn from Gareth Southgate’s humble leadership which I am sure has helped achieve the transformation of the England team and sets them on the road to a great outcome in next year’s world cup. This style of leadership will enable our teams and set the conditions for success to allow us to image and treat our patients to the best of our abilities.

Prof Richard Graham

BNMS President