British Geriatrics Society

Age Concern (including Age Scotland, Age Cymru and Age Northern Ireland), and Help the Aged have joined forces to form AgeUK.

They had a most successful launch in London. I was interested to learn that AgeUK fund 35 research projects. Matthew Taylor, former policy adviser at No 10 and now Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Art, gave an inspiring speech on the right to work in old age. He also sounded warnings on the forthcoming “Decade of Dearth”.  There was discussion of the lessons to be learned from Mid Staffordshire hospital (see Dave Beaumont’s analysis): as well as there being too few staff, some of whom were not qualified to cope with complex ill old people, there was inadequate training - particularly in the recognition and management of confusion and incontinence.  There is still much to be done in spreading the word about good geriatric practice.

The Francis Inquiry does not make for comfortable reading - not just because of its Orwellian size covering 2 voumes and over eight hundred pages, but because it seems that the care of  ill patients frequently appears to take second place to achieving targets.

This view is summarised in a quote in the report; “If there is one lesson to be learnt, I suggest  it is that people must always come before numbers.”

There are problems with ageing, but one of them should not be ageism. “There’s enough to cope with without that,” Sheena McDonald told the BGS’s Spring Meeting in Edinburgh.

The journalist and presenter who was brought up in a Presbyterian manse said the word simply denoted the church was run by elders. “There’s not a whisper of the perjorative about it.” All too often though, the word elderly was a toxic euphemism leading to hysterical headlines and the turning of funding into a political hot potato.

In April 2010, the NHS Confederation (the only independent membership body for organisations within the NHS representing 95 per cent of NHS organisations) released an important report analysing the dementia care.