President's and Chairman's Letter - March 2012

President’s & Chairman’s Letter

As most of you know an Extraordinary General Meeting was held at ExCel on Friday March 2^nd. Prior to the meeting Andrew Meilak resigned as Chair and Andy Franklyn-Miller resigned as Chair of education. At the EGM Michael Turner presented his figures for the costing of UKSEM 2010 and 2011 and while there was not unanimous agreement with his figures, it was apparent that BASEM had suffered huge losses from the 2 conferences. A vote of no confidence in those members of the Executive responsible for these losses was passed, as was a vote to give Michael Turner access to the BASEM accounts, executive meeting minutes and our auditors. It was also admitted that the Executive had been aware of the likelihood of large losses before the AGM even though the membership were reassured there that all was well.

A number of members volunteered to help the newly elected members of the Executive and were co-opted. Lucy Free, the Secretary of BASEM is the only person remaining from the previous Executive. Thus the following is now the structure of the interim Executive Board:

President                            Peter Thomas   

Chair                                      Tom Crisp           

Vice Chair                            Michael Stone

Secretary                             Lucy Free

Membership Sec              Eleanor Tillett

Education                            Paul Marfleet

PR (Members)                  Kate Hutchings

PR (Associates)                 Leo Athanasatos

Treasurer                            Vacant

Co-opted onto the Exec as an advisor- Graham Holloway

This committee has now had a chance to hold a teleconference and are planning the revival of BASEM. As Interim Chair, I will be keeping the membership as well informed as possible, and with this in mind, have already started negotiations to use UKADIS to help circulate information. We have a number of hard decisions to make about BASEM’s future.

Firstly it is essential that the specialty of SEM has a strong and active membership organisation to partner the Faculty. The Faculty cannot fulfil this role but Mark Batt and the Council of FSEM have offered us their full support. I am very grateful to them for this support but BASEM needs to maintain its identity and role as a separate organisation.

Equally important is the education programme and support for those involved in SEM but not specialists – the GP’s with an interest, the school doctors, team doctors etc. We cannot afford to lose any members or to alienate any group involved in SEM, and we will be revisiting our education policy with a view to providing basic training and support to those sitting the Diploma exam.

We need our office staff, who have worked tirelessly throughout, albeit at times without enough support or direction. Katy Barrass is leaving us in April and goes with our thanks. But we will need to replace her – with 656 members at present and education planning and delivery it is impossible to rely on unpaid volunteers. But there are options about what sort of person we could most benefit from recruiting.

We must have a conference in the autumn, and our feeling is that this should be our own and separate to other organisations. But it has to be affordable, yet effective. We will not be paying speakers and intend to use mostly, if not exclusively, UK based lecturers. We need you, the members, to attend to ensure we break even, and to attend the AGM, which will be integral. At the AGM we will produce our proposals for the future, which the membership can discuss and vote on.

We need to put this unfortunate episode behind us and move on. There is no time now for further recriminations. We can pay our bills for now at least and we can, with the help of the membership, keep our heads above water. This has happened at the worst possible time with the eyes of the world on UK Sports Medicine – let us move on and quickly return to more successful times.

Dr Tom Crisp & Dr Peter Thomas