President's Message
Dr Trevor Smith, BAPEN President
We are in the midst of an incredibly difficult winter, and I know everybody is having a tough time at the moment. I hope that our recent virtual Annual Conference went some way to lift everybody’s spirits!
It was obviously a first for us, and it was brought about by necessity and not design, but I was delighted with how things turned out. I must pay tribute to the team behind it, who worked incredibly hard to put together a fantastic programme of events and a wonderful speaker panel. The topics were rich and varied, and we were able to look at all issues through the lens of COVID-19, examining in detail how this year’s events have impacted on patients.
I was delighted that we had such a positive response from both members and non-members alike. No doubt many of you missed conference, it is always such a fantastic opportunity to catch up with each other. But this was a great way to ensure our learning can continue in our new normal virtual world. And don’t forget, all ten webinars are still available, so if you didn’t have the opportunity to catch them at the time you can still do so, just head on over to our website to find out more.
As the end of 2020 fast approaches, I am reflecting on a very strange year, but nonetheless a very productive one for BAPEN. We recognised early on in the COVID-19 response that we had certain obligations to provide guidance for members on managing patients, and I was proud of the way we came together and created what we needed, often working in partnership.
And it wasn’t just patient needs thrown under the spotlight but the needs of our professional community too. Very quickly we recognised a challenge around NG tube insertion. Not recognised as an aerosol-generating procedure, despite evidence to the contrary, this was being performed without access to full PPE. We took swift action on this, in partnership with a number of other groups, calling for a review of the evidence. Sadly, we have still not seen a change in the classification, but we continue to actively campaign for change, and are now part of the AGP Alliance, working alongside other esteemed organisations which share our concerns on behalf of the professionals they represent.
Clearly the pandemic has dominated this year, but I’ve been pleased that we have also managed to produce outputs on other key issues. Our NG Special Interest Group (NGSIG) produced an excellent position paper in September, ‘Time to put patient safety first’. The paper looked at strategies for avoiding Never Events and made recommendations about training and for expert staff, reporting structures and responsibilities within Trusts and Health Boards. Clearly the number of Never Events is disturbing, and I applaud our committed NGSIG team for looking at this issue in detail, and making clear and direct calls to action while also ensuring that frontline staff aren’t wrongly apportioned blame.
I would also like to congratulate our Malnutrition Action Group (MAG) for their work this year. They recently produced a report from the 2019 screening survey, which took place during UK Malnutrition Awareness Week last year. It provided very interesting reading about malnutrition and nutritional care across settings in that snapshot of time last year. The report shows us that, for that one period in October 2019, malnutrition risk was higher than is usually thought. We need to see if this was a one off, a simple moment in time, or if figures are creeping up. The survey ran again this year, once again opening for UK Malnutrition Awareness Week but remaining open for the whole of October. Many thanks to those of you who completed it, we had fantastic uptake and engagement. Hopefully this is something that we can now run every October. I know we will all be waiting to see the report from this year to see whether the pandemic has had an immediate impact, clearly next year’s results will also be telling. This screening is something we can be very proud of. Having taken learnings from our old screening weeks we now have an excellent nationwide model, easy to complete, looking into both malnutrition and nutritional care interventions, in all settings. The hard work of MAG should enable us to give year on year updates, and better inform others of the nutritional state of the nation.
I take my hat off to my colleagues within BAPEN who have worked so hard this year to keep banging the drum despite overwhelming external noise. It is vital that we ‘cut through’ with our message about good nutritional care being foundational to health, now more than ever. I thank all of you for your continued support of BAPEN and your engagement in the key issues, within the context no doubt of your own busy and demanding professional circumstances.
Hoping you are all continuing to stay safe and keeping spirits up as much as you can.
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