Top Tips for Running Regular Meetings

For the foreseeable future we will be dependent on Drug Company sponsorship which will only be forthcoming if there are enough doctors who actually speak to them.

1. Get the best, most inspirational speakers you can afford; otherwise doctors and nurses will eventually stop coming, no matter how good the venue! If you need suggestions on best-speakers, get in touch with me; if you know brilliant speakers ditto!
2. Get the best food you can afford; don’t forget that a lot of G.P.s are vegetarian (they’ll soon remind you, anyway!)
3. Get the best venue you can afford, bearing in mind that easy parking is the number one priority for most harassed doctors.
4. Triple checks the Audio-Visuals before every meeting.
5. Thank the sponsors by name at every meeting and encourage the doctors to speak with them.
6. Check the speakers travel arrangements, audio-visual needs and beg them (don’t always work!) to bring or send in advance a simple handout
7. Record every meeting if you can; you never know when they may be useful.

Don’t!

1. Yield to political pressure to have a speaker because he/she is popular, important locally or wants to talk about politics within their department.
2. Yield to pressure to have meetings in second class or over-charging venues.
3. Yield to pressure groups who wish to bend the ears of local G.P.s on numerically unimportant areas.