December 2006

BASCD conferences, held twice yearly, use interpersonal and mass communication, and aim to help us to become better informed and inspired to improve our management, research and clinical skills. These are memorable and enjoyable, though costly events in our calendars. In recent years the cost to members for each day’s attendance has been approximately £100; this excludes accommodation. Assuming the overall costs for a two-day conference are £300, this will take up the annual training budget for many members. Although we cannot put a price on renewing acquaintances and making new friends, can we measure the outcomes of mass communication? In this respect, “When you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it, but when you cannot measure it, cannot express it in numbers your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.” (Kelvin, 1891). The need to measure outcome, compare it with the aim and then re-allocate resources appropriately becomes more and more urgent as fiscal pressures rise. How to put guidelines into practice prompted the National Institute for Clinical Excellence in November 2005 to commission BMJ Learning (Walsh, 2006) to produce a series of learning modules based on its guidance on a number of topics. An audit tool has therefore been added to BMJ Learning, enabling a participant to assess ‘how you cared for patients before doing the module and how you cared for them afterwards, and the main changes that completing the module has made to your practice’. A chief medical officer has said, “Perhaps more could be achieved in health by improving communication than almost any other factor. This includes communication between the professional and the patient, between professionals and with the public.” (Calman, 1996). Our purpose is to ask if, at scientific conferences like BASCD’s, audit tools are needed so that communication could, if necessary be improved. Presently we know little about the effectiveness of conferences in changing for the better the knowledge, opinion, attitude or behaviour of the attendees. a fundamental biological process: it is the basis of all learning, of ‘profiting from experience,’ of ‘learning from mistakes’”. Audit of conferences’ successes is thus presently ‘of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind’.