Wednesday, July 16, 2008

AGM

Present were: David Craig, Robin McKinlay, Jonathan Oates and Lars Williams.

1. Committee posts: Lew-Chin Chee has stepped down as treasurer, and we thank her for her hard work over the years. Jonathan Oates kindly agreed to fill the post of treasurer, and David Craig has stepped in as secretary. Lars Williams will stay on for another year as chairman.

2. Evening meetings: attendance over the year 2007-8 has been reasonable, though still not as high as we had hoped. We all agreed we should concentrate more on local speakers - there are a lot of initiatives and projects taking place in the west of Scotland, and the WoSPG could be a good forum for presenting and publicising local work. The NBPA meetings are probably a better place for 'big name' speakers.

3. Venue: we know the SGH isn't ideal, and we'll look again into finding a more central venue, eg the Royal College of Physicians building on St Vincent St.

4. Training days: in recognition of our growing membership, many of whom are relatively new to the field of pain, we are hoping to hold an educational / training day in the near future, with a mixture of teaching and workshops. Possible topics include communication skills, research and audit.

5. 2008-9 meetings: a few ideas were discussed, and David will be getting in touch with potential speakers soon. We will retain the current arrangement of 3 meetings (one every 2nd month), plus the joint meeting with the East of Scotland Group, maybe Feb 09. We will reinstate the postal notification of meetings (the 'wee card') as well as continuing with e-mails.

Hope to see some of you at meetings when we start again in October

Lars Williams

Chairman, West of Scotland Pain Group