Thank you very much to everyone that took part in our member survey in 2024. The BAPM office and Executive Committee wanted to share a few of the key findings and outline some of the actions we are going to put in place in response to the suggestions received.
We asked "How satisfied are you with your BAPM membership?"
The average score was 7.9. (An increase from 7.5 in 2021 and 6.5 in 2017.)
These are some things people said about how BAPM helps them:
- “Enjoy webinars. Reliable resource. Excellent at responding to queries.”
- “Helps me network. Helps me boost my knowledge on the latest evidence base.”
- “Thank you for being inclusive.”
- “Connected to the wider Perinatal workforce and team. Connects me to the wider agenda around development in perinatal services and initiatives.”
- “Helps support me as a doctor- the network available also provides emotional support.”
- “Allows us to reflect on our unit practice and develop our own QI.”
- “As an AHP I think the conferences are excellent and the webinars. The frameworks and QI resources are really helpful in unit work.”
- “To know what is going on politically in advocating for maternal and neonatal health.”
- “Thank you for all the amazing work you're doing!”
- “I appreciate the way BAPM has developed and is responsive to the dynamic changes in neonatal care and how it looks to support its members and the wider neonatal community to navigate this.
What have we done with the feedback from the last survey?
The 2021 survey gave us two main suggestions to work on where BAPM members wanted to see improvements. Work is still ongoing in both of these areas but our progress is shared below.
1.“BAPM is not representative enough”
BAPM is a multidisciplinary organisation and in recent years this has really come to the forefront as BAPM’s unique selling point for our events, guidance and membership offering. As of January 2025, nurses and allied health professionals make up 24% of BAPM Members (16% in 2021 and 9% in 2017.)
Careful consideration is given to the make up of each working group and programmes for each conference to make sure that all relevant professional groups are included. We regularly work in partnership with our affiliate organisations to create our annual conference programme and we have recently coordinated a joint response to the Change NHS consultation.
Since 2020, BAPM has had an AHP Rep on the Executive Committee and in 2025 we will be trialling the use of allied health professionals, pharmacy and psychology (AHPPP) panels for our working groups. This will allow each of these six different professional groups to be able to input to BAPM working groups without expanding the group beyond workable limits.
In 2022 we added an EDI lead to the committee. The first projects in this area have been to create an inclusive language guide for BAPM publications and questions to our database on protected characteristics of BAPM members so in the future we will be able to ensure that the members undertaking BAPM’s work are representative of the membership as a whole.
In the future we will continue to actively promote BAPM membership to everyone that works in perinatal care, particularly those that work outside of NICUs.
2.“It’s always the same people on BAPM groups and it’s not clear how to get involved.”
We have added new guidance to the website on applying for, contributing to and chairing a working group. All working group applications are now assessed anonymously and we ask people if they have been on BAPM working groups before to ensure that we are regularly offering places to brand new people. All working group applications are advertised to BAPM members through the newsletter, on our website and on social media.
In the future even working group chairs will be put out to open advert rather than someone being invited to make this process even more open and transparent. We will also be adding a ‘welcome to BAPM’ page on our website that will serve as a guide for new (and existing) members on how to find different BAPM resources and how to get involved in BAPM’s work programme.
We asked “Are there any other benefits you would like to see BAPM offer in the future?”
Recurring themes in this area were the facilitation of more networking opportunities for members, bursaries for conferences, support for research and international collaboration. Many of the ideas suggested here have been incorporated into BAPM’s strategy for 2025-27.
We were asked about tax relief on BAPM membership. We unfortunately cannot offer this as BAPM collects gift aid on membership fees. There were also a couple of requests for more events in London. We are not deliberately avoiding London but in order to keep ticket prices for our events more affordable we need to seek out areas that offer cost effective venues and reasonably priced hotels for speakers. Unfortunately this generally rules London out.
A few people wanted Infant Journal back as a member benefit. The decision to review this partnership was based on member feedback. We did think long and hard about the positives and negatives of this relationship and we did ask if there was any way the Journal could change their advertising partners, however they told us this was not possible. It was therefore ultimately agreed that it was not suitable for BAPM as an organisation to be closely associated with this publication. Obviously members interested in remaining subscribers can arrange this separately.
We asked “What would you like to see BAPM focus on in the next three years?”
Recurring themes were around providing ways to share best practice, more support for research, and supporting staff to join and stay in neonates. All the information collected in the survey, as well as the notes from the focus groups, were shared with the BAPM Executive Committee and work is currently being undertaken to develop BAPM’s three year strategy. The strategy will be shared for member consultation shortly.
