Pippa Blacklock
Blog Post
The BAOS Annual Scientific conferences continue to go from strength to strength as demonstrated by the recent conference held in Belfast, Northern Ireland on the 27 to 29th of September 2017. The event was held in the iconic Europa Hotel in the city centre.
The 12th conference was opened by BAOS President Professor Tara Renton and was attended by the most delegates ever with 410 attending from as far away as Australia and America for the 3 days. BAOS council also welcomed 60 final year Dental students from Belfast Dental School and 20 Foundation Dentists from the Northern Irish scheme on Thursday and 50 Dental nurses on Wednesday to the conference.
The academic content was delivered by a range of nationally and internationally renowned speakers and covered a full spectrum of Oral Surgery practice and controversies from clinical leadership to neuro-linguistic programming and the anxious patient to inferior alveolar nerve injury and the Cardiology/Oral Surgery interface. All the speakers were knowledgeable and engaging with some good Irish humour thrown in for good measure in some presentations.
BAOS received the most ever applications for the open paper and poster presentations and 30 open papers and 50 posters were selected from these. They were of a very high standard and covered a broad range of Oral Surgery practice. The open paper prize was won by Julia Palmer and poster prize by Tamsin Cooper and Alka Saksena. The peoples’ poster, voted for by delegates, was won by Jasveen Matharu and Dipali Amin et al. Winners of the audit and research paper prizes submitted before the conference were: Katy Martin and Shrina Nathwani, Ciro Gilvetti, Sarah McKernon and M C Balmer.
There was a palpable energy and buzz throughout the 3 days in the conference halls as delegates discussed the presentations, caught up with old colleagues and made new friends in the queue for lunch. A feature of all the BAOS conferences is their open, welcoming and friendly atmosphere. For the second year the conference was paperless with delegates using the BAOS conference app to guide their choice of lectures and to inform them of venues and events and speakers.
BAOS council is very grateful to all our sponsors who were able to demonstrate and discuss a variety of products related to Oral Surgery throughout the conference. Particular thanks go to our gold sponsor NSK and silver sponsor 3M and Belfast City Council and Visit Belfast with their help and support for the conferences inaugural trip to Northern Ireland.
Belfast city centre was an amazing place to explore both with its new and old quarters. The city welcomed delegates to evening social events at the magnificent City Hall for the formal black tie event and prize-giving and SS Nomadic, tender to the Titanic, for an informal evening of music and dancing.
Comments from delegates evaluations’ include; ‘Excellent conference, well organised and fantastic speakers’, ‘Had an excellent time professionally and socially. One of the best conferences ever’. ‘This was the best organised BAOS conference I have attended. From the venue to the food and from the course content to the calibre of the speakers I cannot praise the Northern Ireland team higher.’
Amanda Beresford, Catriona O’Hare, conference organisers and the BAOS Administrators and Council must be commended for the huge amount of time and effort they put in the deliver such a successful conference
The BAOS conference was closed by the incoming BAOS President Rebecca Hierons. Rebecca and the BAOS council look forward to welcoming you to the next BAOS conference to be held in Edinburgh 26th to 28th of September 2018 in Edinburgh, Scotland.