the road to hell is paved with good intentions

Members have asked that we publish again, the procedure followed by the BGS in making recommendations to ACDA; this could of course be changed in the future.

The comments apply solely to England and Wales; similar systems are in place for Northern Ireland and Scotland.

The key point that has to borne in mind is that the Society is discouraged from putting up more than twelve names, which means that with the best will on earth the BGS cannot do justice to all the deserving members that it would like to support. There are 14 regions of the Society in England alone, plus Wales. It is quite conceivable that each region could put up three names deserving of recognition, and it is a heartbreaking process to have to pare all the nominations down to a short list of just twelve final names for England and Wales in total.

The Society goes about the process:

• By inviting the Father Figures in each region in the autumn of each year to put forward their recommendation in respect of members in their region.
• This list is then reviewed and pared down by a committee, comprising the President, the immediate Past President, the President Elect and the chairman of the Joint BGS/RCP Committee.
• There follows a consultation with the Royal College of Physicians (London) who have a similar system of inviting recommendations from across the two countries.
• The Society may then amend its original list to ensure that in respect of geriatric medicine, the same recommendations are made to ACDA by both the RCP (London) and the Society; however the Society’s list will always include more geriatricians than can be accommodated by the RCP, who are constrained in respect of the total number of names that they can put forward covering all specialties.
• By this stage, early November, one will also know who has been successful in the previous round of awards, so that names carried forward on the BGS list from the previous year can be removed and new names added to within the 12 allowed.
• Having reached a final list, the BGS office will then proceed to get updated CVs and citations in the prescribed ACDA format from the individual doctors and from the Father Figures respectively; the whole lot is then sent to ACDA under a covering letter in time for the deadline of 31 January.

The BGS and RCP are not the only routes to a successful award; recommendations have in the past been made by the regional health authorities and are now being made by the individual hospital trusts direct to ACDA; these have in the past, and may again in the future, succeed where the BGS and the RCP have failed.

The Society has been asked whether it would provide additional citations to support recommendations from individual trusts. After careful consideration, it has been decided that this would not be appropriate as it blurs the main recommendation of the Society agreed with the RCP, and risks to devalue the citations provided by the Society.

As indicated above, the BGS is deeply conscious of the fact that any system that involves an elimination process cannot be perfect, but the BGS is not responsible for the fact that there is not the funding to go round to support all the merit awards one would like to see made. The officers concerned with administering the agonising process go to great lengths to be as fair as possible in narrowing down the number of candidates to the shortlist of 12.

Richard Lynham
Administrative Director

Since this article was written, there has been an extensive exchange with the English members of the BGS Council and it seems likely that procedures will be changed to provide more transparency in the initial stages of the process, effected in the Regions.