The British Psycho-Oncology Society (BPOS) held its annual conference in Manchester, in March 2025. The event served as a slightly delayed 40th Anniversary Celebration. One of our best-attended recent BPOS conferences, we attracted 78 delegates including researchers, practitioners from a range of disciplines -psychology, nursing, counselling, and radiography. One of the main areas of feedback was how accessible and friendly the conference was, alongside positive comments about the variety and quality of the work presented (86% rated the oral sessions as excellent).
We heard inspiring keynote presentations from Steve Bland, a former journalist and current podcast producer who eloquently gave a personal account of the impact of cancer on his own family, and Dr Ricky Frazer (Velindre University NHS Trust) who presented about exciting innovations and advancements in
immunotherapy. Delegates rated the keynote presentations as either excellent (94%) or good (6%).
Oral presentations and flash talks from our delegates ranged from sessions on cancer caregiving, adolescent and young adult cancer, PROMs and PREMs, psychological interventions, through to inequalities and understudied cancers. Forty-six posters were showcased along with opportunities for networking and mentoring support for students and early career researchers.
Conference abstracts have been published and are available here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/10991611/2025/34/S2
Delegate feedback:
89% of delegates said they are ‘very likely’ to attend the BPOS conference in the future (8% stated they would be ‘likely’ to attend again), and we had some really good comments from the conference feedback forms:
- Keep up the high standard. Excellent conference organisers.
- A really lovely variety of work presented – took a lot away and look forward to implementing in my own practice.
- Wide domains covered during this conference.
- Every talk was relevant and interesting. I liked that the conference was relatively small and not too intimidating.
- Good opportunity to network during breaks, opportunities for students to learn from mentors, quality of research.
- Great networking opportunities, fantastic speakers, great keynote talks and panel, excellent location and food – all round great experience.
- Intimate, informal, collegial, great venue, dietary options, and interesting programme.
- It was a brilliant mix of people and topics and there was a real sense that people wanted to work together and build on existing work.
- Really interesting array of subjects and methodology.
There were also some useful recommendations for future events:
- A focus on methodology, especially AI and creative methods
- Focus on implementation studies and practitioner projects
- Further opportunities for networking and collaboration – during and in between conferences
- Poster sessions – dedicated time and opportunity to speak to researchers
- Flash presentations were appreciated and well received, but need to think about not having too many in one session and perhaps increase time for questions
Congratulations to our prize winners:
- James Rathbone – Best Oral Presentation
- Deborah Critoph – Best Flash Talk
- Grant Punnett – Best Poster
- Lana Cook – Delegate’s Choice Best Poster
The conference also included our Annual General Meeting at which the Committee talked about plans to launch our new Special Interest Groups (identified at the pre-conference workshop on Wednesday 26th March) which will focus initially on ‘Personalised Care’ and ‘Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer’.
Conference entertainment included a drinks reception and buffet style dinner with plenty of opportunity for networking.
We are grateful to Northwest Cancer Research, the Ruth Strauss Foundation, and Wiley for sponsoring the event. Our next conference will be held in Bristol in March 2026.