MINUTES OF SAMSoc AGM 2010
Apologies
Clive Elwood, Mark Maltman, Marge Chandler, Rebecca Littler
We would like to congratulate Rebecca Littler on the birth of her baby.
Chairmans Report
Thanks to our sponsors Hill
Thanks to our Programme committee Stijn, Sheena, and Marge Chandler. It is difficult to provide a varied and generalised programme that is suitable for both specialists and generalists.
Other members of the committee are very hard working in particular Ian Battersby and Yvonne McGrotty who have performed sterling work on advertising on list serve and setting up the forum with Arlo Guthrie of Vetsurgeon.org.
We would like to to encourage our members to make use of the discussion forum and log on regularly as there are additional features such as the online research trial and job advertisements.
Any members who have not paid their subs by the end of April will be removed from the online forum by Yvonne.
Ian Battersby is invited to discuss the Antibiotic Working Group. See appended section
Constitution
The committee is elected for 3 years and members may be re-elected for a further 3 years.
We extend our thanks to Clive Elwood who is stepping down this year as he resurrected the society and also produced a constitution. We thought that a gift for his dedication was in order so we are sending him for a Tank Driving Experience Day. He has sent an email to thank us for this.
We would also like to thank Marge Chandler for her hard work with the Programme, She will continue to print the meeting notes if required.
We would like to encourage members to consider coming on to the committee when new committee members are needed. Next year we will be needing a new Chair person and Ian Battersby is up to be re-elected next year.
Yvonne will be drawing up a list of the duties of each committee member (as she has worked very hard and has done a little of everyones jobs this year).
In the longer term our aims should be to continue our relationship with our current sponsors., identify new sponsors and maintain the case report prize which had great input this year.
Membership Secretary
s report
The group has 116 members with 100 members registered on the vetsurgeon.org forum.
There are 63 members attending this meeting.
Please join the web forum
Subs are due and should be paid at the time we are paying for the PreBSAVA satellite meeting.
There was majority agreement that it should be paid for all in one sum. Although access to web forum will be restricted to subscribed members only.
Treasurers Report:- Summary
We would like to thank the Treasurer and Dr. Jason Woodward for compiling and auditing the accounts respectively.
In 2009 the society made a profit but it was less than appearences would seem as we had to bank 2 years worth of Hill’ s sponsorship (and they are thanked for that). Therefore the corrected profit for 2009 was somewhat less that the profit in 2008.
The loss for the 2009 meeting was just over £1000 greater than in 2008 but if we take member subscriptions and sponsorship into account we do break even.
The major cost to the society is catering and the cost of the meeting was an extra £800 this year.
We will investigate the cost of a cold stand up buffet to see if catering costs can be reduced.
Obviously bank interest is very low at present so not giving a significant income.
We currently have 144 members and 100 members enrolled on vetsurgeon.org forum
Election of Committee members
Vice Chair:-
IB is to deal with the forum
Programme committee:- Mark Dunning
PR;- David Walker
Re-election
The Post of Vice Chair was not refilled.
Rebecca Littler (ICC liason) , Ian Battersby (to deal with the forum) and Allie Woodward (secretary) were reelected onto the committee.
New Members of SAMSoc
There was unanimous approval of a block vote of new members of the society.
Programme committee report by Stijn Nielsson
Feedback from 2009 meeting
Largely positive with a mix of comments on a mixture of topics. With trends. Generally the case reports were very positively received. Some people had the opinion that the case reports shortened the time available for the lectures, and whether members would like to increase the number of case reports.
Some members prefer the day to focus on a single topic area others would prefer a mixture. Obviously this variation in opinion cannot be wholly fulfilled and this year we opted for a mixture of talks with a trend in the thromoboembolism theme.
This year the room is hot, whereas last year it was cold!
Human speakers appear to provide shorter summary lecture notes than their veterinary counterparts.
Please would members give feedback on this years meeting .. It may be possible to put a poll on vetsurgeon.org. regarding the interactive case reports.
Travel Scholarship - this should be attractive benefit for membership not advertised well. Another incentive to get on forum and the price of entering for the scholarship is to provide a written piece on the travel undertaken. This report could be published in the veterinary Times would give publicity for the society. It would be interesting to gain insights as to what the value of the travel scholarship should be.
Kate Murphy is reconsidering the membership structure and looking at access to RCVS library - Mark Dunning pointed out that there had been a reduction in the number of journals offered in their archives.
ANTIBIOTIC Working Group
IB:- The Antibiotic Working group has been set up to try to come up with a poster of guidelines for the use of antibiotics in some clinical situations. Progress has been slow initially. It is a large project and we hope to back it up with information. The BSAVA Scientific committee is backing this project and possibly we will produce a back up document. Likely it will be a 2 year project and may not cover all situations. The hope is that general practitioners will use the guidelines and prevent the restrictions to antibiotic use that were described in Sue Dawson
s lecture.
The length of the lectures are to be changed to 45 minutes per lecture.
Date of next meetingWednesday 30th March, 2011
Any Other Business