PCDS committee elections: How to join

Since its creation in 2004, the PCDS has built a large membership of healthcare professionals working in diabetes in primary care. We have held three very successful conferences and members receive our ‘house journal’ Diabetes & Primary Care, which has increased its frequency of publication, from quarterly to six issues a year) as a result of the society’s success.

The PCDS was also the lead group in the development of the Diabetes Commissioning Toolkit which is being used by a number of diabetes networks and commissioning groups.

As well as these activities, committee members have been and continue to be involved in liaison with other professional groups and in lobbying the Government and politicians. Examples include our involvement with the all-party Diabetes Working Group at the House of Commons, and the Affiliation of Primary Care Specialist Societies at the Royal College of GPs.

When the existing committee was first elected at our 2005 conference our intention was to start a re-election process 3 years later, and we are rapidly approaching that time. A few existing committee members have changed roles and commitments, creating vacancies, and we also hope that there are PCDS members who wish to take a more active role in the society through membership of the committee. I would emphasise that this is a ‘working committee’ – members generously give their own time. We hold 3–4 committee meetings each year, on Saturdays in Birmingham, sometimes with preparatory meetings on the preceding Friday evening. Much of the work is done by email between meetings.

There are currently 17 committee members and approximately a third of those places will now be electable each year, starting from this year. In order to plan that election we are inviting nominations NOW for up to 6 places so that we can hold elections prior to announcing the new committee members at the November 2008 conference (see pages 9–12 for details of the conference).

If you are interested in standing, please see the information box below.

The third National PCDS conference a success!
The other main piece of news from the PCDS is the overwhelming success of the third annual conference, held at the Hilton Metropole, Birmingham, from 16–17 November. The enthusiasm of the 650 delegates was fantastic and I hope that after the 2 days of the conference everyone was able to take new messages back to their practices and improve care for people with diabetes – which, after all, is what it’s all about.