Our CEO, Paul Burgess, and I wanted to bring you all up to date on how the British Association of Cosmetic Nurses (BACN) are managing during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is an unprecedented time, and we have a duty to protect our staff and our members engaging in BACN activities. Set out below is a summary of the actions agreed upon so far. These are being reviewed on a weekly basis, or when the Government issues new guidelines.
The pandemic comes at a particularly awkward time for the BACN, as we are currently dealing with many of our members renewing their membership, and our regional series of events are scheduled to start at the end of April 2020. The BACN can only operate with member subscription, so please, if your membership is expiring, do renew. Our promise to you is if we have to postpone or amend our activities, we will endeavour to ensure that we meet our promise to you all. Meetings can be rescheduled, held virtually and we are already in discussion with our partners about this.
Many of our other activities are virtual and continue as usual. The members' private Facebook site, as always, will be a great source of advice and support to you all as businesses face mounting pressure from the fallout from the virus.
The BACN is also looking at options for providing access to online educational and training tools. We will report back further on this.
It is our hope that, over time, Covid-19 will reach manageable levels and we can all return to normality. Paul, the Board and I all wish you well as we look to maintain our activities in the best interests of our patients and society in general.
HQ update
All the BACN HQ team will be working remotely from home. This will not affect any of our day-to-day services. Please continue to call the BACN should you need to and, as per normal, calls will be answered by our answering service and responded to by one of the team. We are all able to receive your emails, and again, we can respond to your enquiry as previously. We will continue to review the situation, via regular communication between the team, and on the back of any further information issued by the Government. We will endeavour to run as many of our services as normal, and we are always on hand to support members.
Annual renewals
It is the start of the BACN annual renewal period, and for many, that will mean that you are due for renewal. You can check this by logging into the BACN website, but you should also have received an email advising you of your expiry. We very much hope you intend to re-join us again this year. The organisation can only survive with the valued support of its members. The only impact that our remote working will have on renewals for annual members will be physical certificates. These will, of course, be posted once the office is operational again; please do bear with us in these unusual and unforeseen circumstances. Annual paying members can download a copy of their new certificate by logging into the BACN website and going to ‘My Certificates’. All membership material for monthly members is digital, so they will not be affected. If you are experiencing cashflow issues, you can always move to the monthly payment option. Please contact Gareth Lewis, BACN membership and marketing manager, if you wish to do this.
In terms of the finances, we are looking at helping further with membership rates and how to pay, as well as implementing an associate rate for everyone and payment methods.
We are also looking at Government help as a limited company, and we are looking at the possibility of partnering with virtual training and online packages to replace the events that have had to be cancelled.
These are all being worked on presently to look at giving our members continued education even though they may have closed their clinics. Self isolation may give us all some opportunity to give some time to further our education and training, when often it is so difficult to squeeze in, and arm us for when we reopen our doors.
Annual conference
The annual conference is currently set to go ahead on 5–6 November at Edgbaston stadium in Birmingham. We will continue to work in line with Government guidelines regarding mass gatherings; however, at the peak of our conference, numbers of delegates and exhibitors are 450. We hope that by November 2020, we will be through the crisis.