2020 – May 14th to 15th
Minutes from the Virtual Board Meeting
Date: May 14th to May 15th 2020
Meeting venue: Virtual meeting using Teams
Thursday May 14th 17.00 – 20.00 (Danish time) and May 15th 9-12 (Danish Time)
Invited: Marjut Otala (Fi), Astrid Helene Sydtveit (N), Steinunn Thorsteinsdottir (Ic), Kirsten Louise Tryde Macklon (Dk), Ann Thurin Kjellberg (S), Christel Hydén-Granskog (Fi)
Kathrine Birch Petersen (DFS), Antti Perheentupa (SFY), Stina Järvholm (SSRM), Sigrun Beate Kjøtrød (NOFAB)
Not Present: Steinunn Thorsteinsdottir (Ic)
Secretary of the meeting – Marjut
News from the national societies
Review of the 2019 Congress in Gothenburg
NFS 2021 in Helsinki
NFS budget
NFS 2021
credit card/change in by-laws
Education course
The Baltics
NFS web pages
renewed pages
newsletter/blog
Fertility Awareness
any progression in the Nordics
Next meetings
Fall 2020
Ocean Hotel in May 2021, dates?
Matters arising
The national chairmen informed about the situation in each country. Clinics have started operating again after complete stop or modified activities and/or diminished number of operations due to the Covid-19 epidemic.
A major change in Norway has been that the law of biotechnology has been modernized, and now egg donation, treatment of single women, social freezing and PGT is allowed.
Ann and Stina gave a nice review of the Gothenburg Congress discussing the budget, number of participants and sponsors, reviews, comments and wishes given by the attendees and sponsors, conference services, getting speakers, timetables and more. Overall the congress was a success.
Christel gave a through presentation about the plans for the NFS Helsinki 2021 Congress. She introduced the venue, local organizing committee, a plan for the budget, suggested speakers from outside the Nordics and a preliminary program for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. There was a lot of discussion and further planning and suggestions for the program and speakers. There is a need to find more speakers from Norway and Sweden and the representatives from these countries will help finding them.
There has been some concern especially from the local committee of what happens if the congress needs to be cancelled. The cancellation of the venue needs to take place half a year before the congress (Feb 2021) and therefore the board will evaluate the situation in January 2021 at the latest. In case we need to cancel, the general opinion was that instead of a virtual meeting it would be better to postpone the meeting to 2022.
The board approved the preliminary professional program, the plan for the practical implementation of the meeting and the 2 non-Nordic speakers.
The board accepted the preliminary financial aspects of the Helsinki 2021 budget. There was discussion about an acceptable fee for the participants as well as suitable fees for the sponsors.
The board is in a process of acquiring a credit card. As it has not been stated in the by-laws who is allowed to have control over a society credit card, it is now the board as a whole. Therefore, every time there is a change in members of the board, the bank has to be contacted in order to verify the new member. Thus, the board needs to think of a way to include the use of the credit card into the by-laws to simplify its use.
If we plan to make changes to the by-laws we should also think of a new article that would allow to have the annual meeting and general assemly also on a virtual platform. This needs to be addressed again before the next general assembly.
Sara Somers from the ESHRE NmCC group has informed the NFS that they have found another solution for the education of nurses and midwives who are ESHRE members. Therefore, with regards to the Nurses and Midwives Certification, there is no need for collaboration between our two organizations at this moment.
However, it is the wish of NFS members for the NFS eduction courses to continue in some form. We have finalized all three parts of the course and there is an opportunity to continue the courses in a new way.
The Baltic Fertility Society has been in contact with the NFS in order to build collaboration between the societies and a joint webinar has been suggested. Marjut and Antti spoke to the BFS representatives Andres Salumets and Zivile Cerkiene earlir in the day to discuss the webinar for NFS and BFS members.
Marjut and Antti presented the suggested outlines for a webinar that could also act as a continuation for the education courses this year. There could be for example 4 sessions with a duration of 1-1,5 hours for a month, on the second half of the day (eg every Tuesday at 5 p.m.) with 4 different attractive topics, addressing all professional groups. The webinars could take place in October/November as live lectures with a moderator to collect written questions from the participants during the lecture and then ask them live after the talks. In previous years we have had support from a sponsor and this year it may also be possible. The talks would be recorded and put onto the NFS website. Antti will be in contact with the possible sponsor(s) and investigate what would be a good technical solution.
The boad approved and encouraged these plans. Antti and Marjut will come back to the board with more specific plans later.
The proposed collaboration as stated above.
Steinunn has done a lot of work with the renewed web pages and they now have a very nice look. It would be good if we could attract more people to the pages. We now have a newsletter that you can subscribe but no information where the subscriction request goes. It was discussed that we should remove the newsletter subscription or find a way to make it useful. The preliminary idea was to reach out to the NFS members at least twice a year. More specific plans and the techinical implementation of these plans will be discussed later with Steinunn.
The board decided to postpone the discussion about this topic due to the special situation this spring and thus the poor opportunities to take fertility awareness furher in the Nordics.
Marjut will send dates for a proposed telemeeting.
The Ocean hotel is reserved for May 6-7 (Thu-Fri), 2021. The meeting will take place 15.00-20.00 on Thursday and 8.30-12.00 on Friday.
No matters arising.
Marjut OtalaPresident of NFS