The BIR Annual Congress 2020, was for the first time a virtual event held between 4-6 November 2020. The following awards were presented:
The Godfrey Hounsfield Memorial Lecture and Award
This was presented to Professor Dame Clare Gerada who delivered a talk on “Leadership during a crisis.”
Dr Gerada drew on her extensive experience as a GP and President of the Royal College of GPs (2010-2013) to offer practical advice on what makes a good leader, communication skills and emphasised the importance of empathy, and awareness of the needs of all practitioners to ensure they focus on their own mental health and wellbeing.
The Barclay Medal
The Barclay Medal is awarded annually to the author whose contribution to BJR has been a piece of original research of special merit, contributing to the science and practice of radiology. It was presented to Dr Angela Pathmanathan and team from the Royal Marsden Hospital, London for the paper entitled entitled ‘Comparison of prostate delineation on multimodality imaging for MR-guided radiotherapy’.
The BIR “Make it Better” Award
The BIR “Make it Better “ Award was presented to Dr Alex Stewart, Helen Minnaar and Ciarna Brooker from the St Luke’s Cancer Centre at the Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Hospital. The team won the award for developing the ‘One-Stop Papillon Clinic’, providing advance patient information and enabling radiotherapy on the day of the initial consultation for patients travelling long distances for treatment. Many patients travelled long distances for the consultation and then had to return on a different day for treatment (low energy contact X-ray brachytherapy or CXB – also known as the Papillon technique). To address this, a new out-patient letter was developed, times between MDT meetings and appointments were extended to allow for information to be sent and digested. A patient buddy system was also set up to give advice to patients on the day.
Dr Alex Stewart said “As one of the four centres delivering Papillon treatment in the UK we have worked hard to deliver a service which has patient choice at the heart of it. We are delighted to win the BIR Make it Better award. It has been really important to us to implement change in a patient-focussed manner using their feedback to continue our improvements. We are very thankful to the local BRIGHT and GUTS charities who have funded much of our progress such as administrative posts and patient informations DVDs. We plan to use the prize funds to buy some dedicated equipment to improve the patient positioning for Papillon treatment and improve patient comfort during the procedure.”
Image: Left to right, Helen Minaar, Alex Stewart, Ciarna Brooker.
The BIR Nic McNally Radiobiology Travel Award
The BIR Nic McNally Radiobiology Travel Award is in the form of a travel bursary to a conference (face to face or virtual) and is awarded to a radiobiology researcher who may be scientifically or medically qualified. This was presented to Mr Conrado Guerrero Quiles, a PHD student at the Manchester Biomedical Research Centre for his paper entitled ‘Protemic profiling of hypoxia-induced changes in cell derived extracellular matrix from bladder cancer cell lines’ and presented at the National Cancer Research Institute Conference.
BJR/Jusha Early Career Investigator Award
The BJR/Jusha Early Career Investigator Award is given annually to a BJR author, within 5 years of appointment to a senior post, for the best original research paper published in BJR that year.
Presented to Jason Brett Hartman and team for their paper entitled ‘Intracranial aneurysms at higher clinical risk for rupture demonstrate increased wall enhancement and thinning on multicontrast 3D vessel wall MRI’.
Dr Prafulla Ganguli Award
The BIR Dr Prafulla Kumar Ganguli Award is given annually to a BJR|Case reports author for the best original case report published in BJR|Case reports that year. The award was presented to Dr Muram El-Nayir and team for the paper entitled ‘IgG4-mediated sclerosing fibroinflammatory disease presenting as inflammatory breast malignancy’.
