BCIS Members’ Survey

The recent BCIS members’ survey, asking your views on the priorities for BCIS over the coming years, together with your feedback and recommendations for ACI, generated a huge number of invaluable and insightful opinions.

A number of themes emerged, and following a meeting of BCIS Officers and Group leaders yesterday, several have generated action plans.

BCIS Position Statement on Radiation Protection & Cath Lab Safety
A focus group will be working towards a position statement outlining the BCIS position on this critical issue, which many members highlighted as a vital but perhaps neglected area

Stroke thrombectomy
The need for equitable access to this critical intervention, and for interventional cardiologists to play a role, was a common theme. BCIS will renew efforts to establish a robust mechanism for interventional cardiologists to be trained in stroke intervention, and to contribute to the delivery of round the clock services local to patients. Work on this is already underway

Workforce planning and Primary PCI Rotas
Many expressed concern over the challenges of delivering appropriately staffed 24/7 on-call services. We will be conducting a detailed survey to understand the current status, and importantly the likely future position, of staffing levels and PPCI rotas

Equity of access to structural intervention
Geographical variation in access to structural intervention was highlighted, in particular acute TAVI (where patients in non-surgical centres are frequently disadvantaged), and mitral & tricuspid intervention. We will be gathering more data on this problem, and working on strategies to address it

These are just some of the issues raised, and we will be working on many of the others through the Council and Working Groups. If you were unable to respond to the survey, or have more ideas on what BCIS should be up to, please don’t hesitate to contact us. In the coming months we will move on to working through your ideas for ACI as we start to build the programme for 2027.

Best wishes to all,
Dan Blackman, BCIS President