Monday, 29 September 2025
September has always felt like a month of change, when the leaves shift, days shorten, young people return to education, and seasonal viruses and vaccination programmes re-emerge. In our profession too, the landscape evolves, with different pressures, innovation and transformation.
One of BSH’s strengths is the collective commitment which allows us to respond to changes, update and support each other. The overwhelmingly positive feedback from our recent Members’ Survey reassures me that we are moving in the right direction.
September is also the time of year when we convene our Board retreat. This is a chance to appraise our strategic trajectory, to assess what’s working, and to map out what comes next. After reflection and discussion, we reaffirmed that the strategy we developed two years ago remains right on course, and we now have the momentum to build further on it. Across all four pillars of the strategy, we’ve seen meaningful progress:
- Membership has grown by 15% since last year’s retreat, and we remain focused on inspiring recruitment into the field through initiatives such as early-career support and our mentoring platform.
- Knowledge sharing continues to be central, with a wide programme of webinars, podcasts, guidelines, and educational days.
- Advocacy has strengthened further, securing greater visibility and influence for the specialty.
- and to further reinforce the BSH’s infrastructure, our Digital transformation has moved forward decisively.
A highlight this month is the formal publication in BMJ Open of our study defining liaison haematology. In brief, we describe this as the gamut of haematological advice, (clinical or laboratory, scheduled or ad hoc) offered to colleagues across primary and secondary care. Often this advice is given for a patient not under the haematologist’s direct care. It includes interpreting nuanced laboratory results in their clinical context, assisting in diagnosis and guiding complex decision-making.
This work is integral to safe, effective patient care. It underpins decisions across medicine, surgery, obstetrics, intensive care, oncology, general practice, and beyond. Indeed, the Royal College of Physicians’ members’ survey found that almost 50% of physicians sought haematology input every day, whether for minor or major queries. Yet despite its ubiquity and importance, liaison haematology has rarely been quantified or recognised in workforce planning or service models.
By naming it, defining it, and evidencing it through our subsequent survey, we have taken a vital step in making liaison haematology visible. Our next task is to ensure it is properly recognised and resourced. The Royal College of Pathologists is supporting this by challenging job plans to allocate appropriate time for liaison responsibilities. Encouragingly, this has already been secured in eight new posts, with an average of 1PA allocated specifically for this work.
My hope is that, by establishing liaison haematology as a defined entity, we pave the way for broader recognition of liaison medicine across all medical specialties and initiate work with the Royal College of Physicians to ensure these essential but often invisible responsibilities are valued in national workforce planning.
The requirement for haematology support to primary care will increase. The government has committed £10 million to pilot neighbourhood health services in 43 areas, aiming to bring integrated care closer to communities and to reduce unnecessary hospital referrals. To support this shift and ensure haematology input is seamlessly accessible, we recommend that the Advice and Guidance provided to primary care uses the national electronic referral system. This would ensure that the quality and quantity of requests and responses is documented formally and appropriately remunerated by the integrated care boards. We have prepared standard answers to common questions that will provide useful resource and education, and can be adapted for individualised responses. When our digital processes allow, we will upload these to the members’ portal.
Finally the programme for the 2026 Annual Scientific Meeting is developing nicely, with stimulating plenary and parallel sessions which will span the breadth of both Medical Haematology and Haemato-Oncology. Abstract submission has now opened, and those chosen for poster or oral presentation will also be published in the British Journal of Haematology. We welcome submissions from all levels of staff.