IBMS President Debra Padgett's farewell
I write this on the train heading home after chairing my last Council meeting as President of our amazing IBMS. Allan Wilson warned me that this would be an emotional day and he wasn’t wrong. As I head into my year as Past President, I look forward to a very bright future for the Institute with Joanna taking up her presidency, and I want to take a moment to reflect on what we have achieved collectively over the last two years.
Every IBMS President says that Congress is the highlight of their term of office, and I know exactly what they mean. As I welcomed you all to Birmingham again this year, it was without doubt the biggest and best four days; 19 lecture streams, hundreds of speakers and 5000 delegates passing through the doors of Birmingham’s International Convention Centre. My Albert Norman address gave me the opportunity to discuss the IBMS’ work over the last year, including the active role the Institute is now playing in politics and lobbying, leading to major government bodies and NHS England (NHSE) seeking our views and expertise.
“Support. Progress. Promote.” is at the core of everything we do today - forming the building blocks of how we develop our future biomedical science workforce to meet the needs of our patients and service users. Launching our response to the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan at Congress gave us the platform to talk about the scope of our capabilities from pre-registration to Consultant Biomedical Scientist and I have taken the opportunity afforded to me to highlight your role in a modern multi professional workforce. We have worked to review, update and develop new qualifications for you to reach your full professional potential. We provide an infrastructure for you to evidence your ability and potential in that service delivery, making our workforce more equitable, diverse and inclusive than it has ever been in our past.
I was also reminded by colleagues on our history committee that my presidency was unique, in that I have been fortunate to have had two Congresses in my term as President. However, I did step back to President Elect briefly in March 2022 to enable Allan to enjoy his Congress (which had been delayed by the pandemic) as our President.
In my time as President, I have delivered speeches, presentations and talked to so many people, and throughout I have highlighted the importance of our history – forming an understanding of the fact that our providence speaks volumes for our credibility but also that we have the vision and ability to evolve and remain relevant to the modern scientific workforce of today.
In the last 72 hours alone, I have seen the way the IBMS supports its members and what it means to them. On Wednesday I had the honour of travelling to Dundee to support Gemma Watt reignite the IBMS Dundee and Tayside branch. I was invited to speak on strategy and the membership survey and highlighted the work in support of our members across all home nations and overseas in education, development, advanced practice and technology. It was wonderful to see branch members come along and understand the community IBMS wraps around the work we do. But the highlight was meeting Ken Kennedy. Ken has been an IBMS member for 61 years and chaired the original Dundee branch. He showed me the 5-D newsletters of yesteryear and was proud of the heritage of the branch that will once again continue following Wednesday’s meeting.
From there I headed to Abertay University to present Olivia with a President’s Prize. I love these events. Seeing all the youthful enthusiasm and hope for the future of our profession as it blossoms shows me we’re in safe hands long into the future. In those few hours I saw the history and future of our Institute. Anyone who knows me knows that I am steeped in the history of our Institute and colleagues around the Council table often comment on my encyclopaedic knowledge of our M&As. I make no apology for that. After all, we learn from our past to develop our future! Maybe our History Committee may have a space for me in the future?!
As I concluded my time in Dundee and headed to London, I once again had time to reflect on my travels and the places I’d visited over the last two years. I have had the huge pleasure of welcoming three new branches to our network over the last 12 months in East Midlands, Reading and Kent and supported getting others like Dundee and Tayside to reinvigorate. To those of you I have visited, thank you for your hospitality and honest feedback, which we have valued. Engaging with you, our members, to understand your views is paramount in developing a professional body that best serves your future. To the British train network… well, you give it a good effort and I’ve tested a fair few miles.
The IBMS presidency is an honour and a great privilege, but it cannot be done in isolation. I have had the pleasure of working alongside some wonderful people over the last two years. David Wells, CEO, friend, colleague (IBMS husband!) and I had over one hundred weekly catchups to ensure we were advancing the delivery of the IBMS strategy and upholding our duties on behalf of Council and our members. I couldn’t have done it without him and we have achieved a phenomenal amount in these last two years.
Council colleagues, your steady guiding hand in ensuring the IBMS remains the voice of the profession often goes unnoticed. Without you we would not have the profile we have achieved. You do your work as volunteers and you continue to deliver our strategy for the benefit of our members - engaging with key stakeholders and policy makers, parliamentarians, business leaders, industry champions, academia and you maintain our voice within all four home nations and overseas. Our presence at significant events speaks to the credibility we now have as an organisation and I thank you for the work you do.
I knew that my last Council meeting as chair would be emotional as we said goodbye and I want to thank two special friends. To Mr Gordon McNair, as honorary treasurer, thank you for your financial stewardship and keeping me on the straight and narrow. To Mrs Sarah May - the woman, the myth, the legend!! - with quiet, understated, efficient elegance you have produced some of our most thought provoking and hard-hitting position statements and response documents. Sarah has been the backbone of IBMS in her role as Deputy Chief Executive and, whilst I believe no one is irreplaceable, in this instance I fear I might be wrong… Sarah is unique and we’ll miss her sage council dreadfully.
We have also strengthened our relationships with other professional bodies and NHS departments. Most notably Prof. Mike Osborn, as our presidencies ran in parallel, the collaboration between RCPath and IBMS grew stronger, and that partnership has enabled us to showcase the importance of Biomedical Scientists working at the top of their licence alongside their medical equivalents.
As Allan Wilson stood down from his term of office, he thanked you for all you did throughout the lockdowns and this year I would like to thank you for your resilience in the pandemic recovery response - the role we play in elective recovery and of course the cancer backlog. These are critical areas stretching our NHS but our role as development scientists, researchers, innovators and creative thinkers is critical in that recovery process. As a Council member, I have never seen such a groundswell of change and development as I have over the last 24 months. I have never been as proud of the profession, and to be a biomedical scientist, as I am today.
Biomedical Sciences Day 2023 was amazing - our biggest and best to date. Hosting alongside Lord Bethell from the House of Lords is certainly a day I will never forget but having the platform to advocate for our profession and our critical role at the heart of healthcare was an opportunity not to be missed.
I started my career journey as a medical laboratory assistant, which I took to gain some lab experience, and a senior colleague saw something in me that he supported and nurtured. To Mr David Biddles… thank you! Without you I may not have become a biomedical scientist and had this fabulous opportunity and great honour to be President of our Institute of Biomedical Science.
So yes, Congress was the highlight, along with Biomedical Science Day and my first invite to the House of Lords to champion our profession, but as I draw into Penrith (late again) on a Friday evening my true highlight has been meeting all of you - our wonderful, dedicated members. So thank you for making this the most amazing two years of my life. It has transcended anything I thought possible. To our next President, Joanna Andrew, this is the best job you’ll ever have. Good luck and enjoy it. You’ll be fabulous!
I am the product of hard work, continual learning, support, drive and determination but above all passion for the work that I do every day. You are only limited by yourself, whether you are the next President of our Institute, a potential Consultant Biomedical Scientist, from any background or walk of life. Anything is possible if you want it enough and IBMS are here to support you on every step of that journey. I’m proof of that!
And now the festive season is once again here. So, on behalf of the Institute, thank you for all that you do every day but also, I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and successful New Year.