Presidential Handover: Building on Strong Foundations for the Future of the BLA

In this episode of BLA Connections: A Clear Voice, host Natalie Watson marks the handover of the British Laryngological Association presidency from Mr Declan Costello to Mr Nicholas Gibbins. 

Declan reflects on his two-year term, highlighting the steady development of the Association’s foundations, including a new website, improved membership systems and strengthened organisational structures. He discusses the importance of collaboration, both within the UK and internationally, noting successful initiatives such as the BLA Congress and the voice clinics study day in Manchester. 

Declan emphasises that while much of the recent work may not have been highly visible, it has been essential in setting the stage for future growth and innovation.

Incoming president Nick Gibbins shares his enthusiasm for building on this foundation, describing laryngology as entering a “golden age” of rapid advancement. He outlines plans to enhance global partnerships, encourage data sharing across institutions, and develop the BLA’s online presence into a central hub for clinical knowledge and training. 

Nick also stresses the importance of supporting trainees and ensuring that the BLA continues to guide standards in the field. Both he and Declan express optimism for the Association’s future, with shared ambitions to expand membership, foster collaboration, and strengthen the BLA’s role as a leading voice in laryngology both in the UK and internationally.

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Transcript

I like to think that the last couple of years we've been sort of setting the foundation for things that can sort of take off over the next few years.

We've got leaders, worldwide leaders in the field across the council and up and down the country. And we don't need to do any crazy cutting-edge stuff. It's already happening. It's already there.

(Natalie) 

Welcome to BLA Connections, A Clear Voice. I'm your host, Natalie Watson, and I'm delighted to bring you discussions and insights from experts from across the globe on all things laryngology. In today's episode, we mark the handover of the presidency of the BLA from Mr. Declan Costello to Mr. Nicholas Gibbins.

Declan Costello is a consultant ear, nose and throat surgeon specialising in voice. He studied music at St John's College Cambridge, where he was a choral scholar and went on to study medicine at Imperial College. As a singer himself, he has a particular interest in treating voice disorders in performers.

He has published a number of books and has written many chapters. Declan is on the Presidential Council of the European Laryngological Society and is editor of ENT in Audiology News.

Nicholas Gibbins is a consultant, ENT and Head & Neck surgeon at Lewisham Hospital. He trained in London and the southeast of England. Nick has built a reputation as an excellent surgeon, teacher and lecturer. His key interests in the voice are the diagnosis and treatment of vocal fold scars and solchi and the care and the treatment of the professional voice. More recently, he has been sought after to lecture on musculoskeletal problems that can either originate in the larynx causing muscle retention imbalance or that arsing dystoly and affect the biomechanics of the voice. He write and publishes regularly and is now the incoming president of the British Laryngological Association.

Thank you so much, both of you, for joining today.

So, starting with you, Declan what will you remember most about your term as BLA president?

Declan (02:09)
We've changed quite a lot about how the BLA works, but none of it is enormously sexy or obvious if you like, that we've changed quite a lot of our sort of back office functions, we've had a new website, we've got a new membership system, we've had a change of administration, so we now have the wonderful Heather running the show behind the scenes. So there's been quite a lot of kind of restructuring of things, which as I say isn't enormously sexy or exciting. But we have of course had lots else going on in terms of our usual output with the BLA Congress and the Cutting Edge last year with more of that sort of thing planned and we've had other courses as well including a voice clinics study day in Manchester which was extremely successful. I mean I like to think that the last couple of years we've been sort of setting the foundation for things that can sort of take off over the next few years.

Natalie (03:05)
Brilliant. And also the thing I really remember is the UEP conference as well, you know, the collaborative working.

Declan (03:12)
Of course, yeah, the Union of European Phoniatricians, yeah, in Zagreb, that was a really good meeting. Yes, agreed. And actually, Nick will probably talk about this, but that's the sort of thing that I think we want to do more of, collaborations with colleagues in this country and overseas.

Natalie (03:30)
Well you have navigated the association so well during the past two years, not to mention, you know, bringing us up to date, you know, major overhaul of the website and all the things that you mentioned. And anyone can access that website if you go online at www.https://britishlaryngological.org/

I wanted to thank you for your leadership and commitment to the BLA over the years and I know you won't be very far and you'll stay on the council as well so you can give us your guidance still. So do you have any tips for Nick?

Declan (04:00)
Thank you, it's been a pleasure.

Yes, I mean, I guess.

If you can answer your emails as quickly as Chad Al Yagchi answers his emails, then you will be achieving something. I don't think I've yet achieved it. Chad is, you know, the sort of the third person in bed with us, as it were, in all of this. He's extraordinarily rapid at responding to messages. I've never understood how he does it. So, yeah, which is not an absolute prerequisite, but there's quite a lot of sort of quick fire. Yeah. Giving an answer very rapidly sort of thing. Yeah, I think it would be great to forge more collaborations with overseas organisations and there's lots and lots of that planned I think. And I know that Nick has lots of other ideas. So yeah, just keep your finger on the pulse.

Natalie (04:52)
Well Nick, firstly congratulations on the presidency. I saw some social media pictures of the actual physical handover at the European Laryngological Society Conference.

Nick Gibbins (04:56)
Well, thank you very much. Yeah, that was great. It looked very professional, but it was more of handshake in a corridor handing over the gavel.

Natalie (05:14)
And did you, you took the gavel all the way to Warsaw?

Nick Gibbins (05:19)
Yes,

Declan (05:20)
Yeah, I brought it out there. Yeah. Of course, the history of the gavel is that it was given to us by the American Laryngological Association when we were founded, you know, 12 years ago. And we were saying while we were out there, it's one of the most nerve wracking things of being president is you can't lose this gavel. You know, and think of the ALA, they've been going since 1898 or something. The guy in charge of the gavel or the girl in charge of the gavel there, if you lose that, you're in a lot of trouble. So it was, yeah, I did. I brought it out to Warsaw and handed it over and I was very glad to get rid of it too.

Natalie (05:45)
Yeah

Nick Gibbins (05:50)
Yeah, and I got it home and put it in a safe drawer straight away. Out of reach for my children.

Natalie (05:51)
haha

Declan (05:53)
Yeah.

Natalie (05:54)


Declan (05:56)
Yeah.

Natalie (05:57)
Very good, yes. It's a worry, isn't it? So what do you hope to achieve Nick, during the two-year term?

Nick Gibbins (06:05)
Well, firstly, I've got very big shoes to fill. Declan's done a fantastic job over the last couple of years and we all agree with that. yeah, there's a certain amount of Declan thinking that he can step back a bit, but we're not letting him go and he's going to be heavily involved with all his experience and his links across Europe and the world. Yes, going forward,

I consider us being in this real sort of golden age of laryngology at the moment. Everything's expanding so rapidly. The number of in-office procedures is expanding what we're able to do. And the technologies around sort of overlapping with the gastroenterologists, overlapping with our head and neck surgeon colleagues, all of these things we're really getting stuck into and we've got leaders, worldwide leaders in the field across the council and up and down the

We don't need to do any crazy cutting edge stuff. It's already happening. It's already there. So my view on this is to do exactly as Declan said, which is to forge greater contacts across the world, which he's already done and we've got more links with the ELS, the Declan's On Council, with the European Laryngological Society. We've got Indian connections where we're going out to lecture next year. We've got connections with our American colleagues who like coming over to Europe and the laryngology world. So I think building on those and creating those links with European and worldwide societies is going to be really important because in certain areas of laryngology, none of us have very big numbers of patients with certain conditions. And if we can create links and create big databases of similar patients, then we get much better data that we can treat our patients with. Recently, the ELS, heard some American talks, Ashley Rourke, Rebecca Howell about, upper esophageal sort of manometry, pressure testing, swallowing issues and they have been able to present this data which is enormous because they've been able to collect from a very wide pool of patients and a pool of data and I think that's going to be so important going forward for laryngology. That's the first thing. The second thing is we have these amazing experts doing really cool stuff and getting their knowledge if you don't come to these Cutting Edge conferences. Somehow that knowledge I think can be missed, especially if you're a trainee or a junior consultant somewhere and you're trying to set up a practice. So having a repository of information where you can go to, so having the BLA website that can sort of revamp and using that as a knowledge base so people can just log in and go, what do I do in this situation? I think would be an amazing thing. It would be a lot of work, but I think there is a real potential there to have a hub of information that everyone can tap into.

Natalie (09:01)
Yeah, it's a great foundation that Declan has grown and is seeded and you're going to help grow. So it's exciting times for the BLA.

Nick Gibbins (09:12)
Well, I think so. I think we're right on the up-curve. I remember when I was a registrar some time ago now, on the curriculum for laryngology was a three-line paragraph about you might need to know how the voice works. We forward-wind 15 years, it's chalk and cheese. It's almost completely unrecognisable to what it was 15 or 20 years ago. And it's expanding rapidly. I think we also, the other thing that I am very keen that we ride the wave of this expansion is being able to try and direct where our trainees or how our trainees learn and what they need to learn if they want to do laryngology.

Natalie (09:56)
Yip, I totally, totally agree with that. Brilliant. So making this podcast short and snappy, final question to you both. How do you see the future of the BLA?

Declan (10:09)
Yeah, I mean, I think we're going to continue to grow. We have ambitions to gain more members and to have wider networks. I think actually the existence of this podcast has been really innovative for medical organisations of our type. that's entirely down to you, Natalie. You and Heather have really driven it and made it very high up in the charts of medical podcasts for sure. So that sort of innovation, I think, as Nick says, video content, learning for the website and on social media and building links. I think that's where I see the BLA going.

Natalie (10:42)
And you Nick?

Nick Gibbins (10:44)
Absolutely, I think the future is incredibly bright. But we also, it's our job to capitalise on that. Not in a personal way, but capitalise on it into making sure that the BLA is the lodestar for laryngology in the UK and a major player across the world, hopefully we can be the association that other people say well what does the BLA think and we can give them hopefully our expert opinion and people will listen to that and I think that's going to be really exciting future for the BLA.

Natalie (11:21)
Well, I'm excited. Any final words from you both?

Declan (11:26)
Just for me, Natalie, thank you for the podcast. Thank you for the opportunity to chat this evening about the handover and yeah, more power to you. I look forward to the rest of the series.

Natalie (11:34)
Yes, you should be good and thank you very much.

Nick Gibbins (11:37)
Absolutely, I echo Declan's comments about the podcast brilliant.

Natalie (11:41)
Brilliant.

So thank you both so much for joining us today and sharing your experience of being president and president elect and your dreams and hopes for the BLA for the future.

I have been your host, Natalie Watson. Please do tune in this series for more laryngology topics. We would also love to hear from you. Please feel free to email with any topics you would like us to explore, any questions you have, along with any suggested experts you would like us to hear from.

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