Guidelines in Nuclear Medicine have been, and continue to be, developed by a number of organisations throughout the world. National regulations on the administration of radioactive substances and differences in clinical practice and service delivery mean that guidelines do not readily apply across regional and national boundaries. In Europe, the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM) coordinating the development of guidelines, but recognises the need for national guidelines.

The BNMS does not wish to produce large, detailed guidelines covering the performance of specific diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. It does, however, wish to produce succinct Quality Guidelines which address the key aspects of procedures that affect the quality of the result. In this respect the BNMS guidelines seek to draw on published evidence to support quality statements. The BNMS guidelines do not represent minimum standards. They do, however, contain elements that are mandatory (e.g. refer to regulations) or pseudo-mandatory. Other parts will be aspirational as far as some departments are concerned, but are nonetheless regarded as reasonable targets. They are intended to be dynamic documents.

The BNMS Clinical Procedure Guidelines were formally approved at the Annual General Meeting of the Society on 10 April 2001 and discussed on the following day at the Annual Conference. The guidelines are now in the public domain, they belong to you, not to BNMS Council. To let us know what you think (about specific guidelines or the process in general) please contact us."

Please note: At the time of writing these documents reflected current UK practice. However, practice does change and therefore some aspects of the guidance may be superceded before the document's review date.