Cheques and balances at the BCMA

First I would like to emphasize that the following are my personal opinions, and I make no claim with respect to any official position of the BCMA.

Proper governance rests on adherence to our constitution and bylaws and a commitment to rules of procedure. It is contingent on duties of care, loyalty and obedience, properly applied constraints, and on disclosure, transparency, and accountability. All this requires a culture that promotes learning, objectives, risk taking, achievement, fairness, and criticism consistent with our shared values. From this, we must not shy away.

However benign, irregularities with­in the BCMA have included the convening of meetings absent adequate notice, the adoption of e-mail resolutions absent adequate approval by directors, disputed application of committee terms of reference and membership, and a board policy that in 2006 “revoked” the waiver of dues to which our most senior members are, under our bylaws, entitled.

Regarding our treasury, our board-appointed Governance and Nominating Committee, in my view outside of our bylaws, insisted on nominating their choices to fill Audit and Fi­nance positions. They did so even after I questioned whether our directors should propose their own overseers and, in so doing, inhibiting those less advantaged to stand from the floor.

Beyond the principles of transparency, accountability, and participation, such choices have concrete effects. We now have, on Audit and Finance, a nominee view that—des­pite our increasing millions in uncommitted reserves—any lowering of dues risks our members getting too comfortable with such relief.

Isn’t it time for a change? Let us move to better systems of checks and balances, such as Dr Charles Webb, my seconder, and I have proposed in a set of key bylaw reforms with members’ ballots pending.

A healthy balance should mean more than the accrual of cheques written by the membership.
—Jim Busser, MD
BCMA Honorary Secretary-Treasurer

Jim Busser, MD, FRCPC, MHSc,. Cheques and balances at the BCMA. BCMJ, Vol. 55, No. 3, April, 2013, Page(s) 136 - Letters.



Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply