Aberdeen Spring Meeting

Beverley Castleden, in the Chair welcomed a great breadth of expert speakers to bring health promotion to the centre of the geriatrics stage.

Chris Drinkwater, Professor of Primary Care, dosed up the geriatricians amongst us with a stern reality check courtesy of the Wanless Report. He warned that unless we proactively engage with the prevention agenda, the unchecked expansion of the older population will be lead to uncomfortable congestion of our hospitals by 2022 and further debt. Useful advice was given about how to turn guidance and policy through both thin and rich networks into contracts and other outputs.

Sian Griffiths, Public Health Consultant at Oxford advocated translation of our skills as geriatricians, currently focussed on individual patients to community, national and even global arenas. The Public Health consultant’s job is to take the “long view”, perhaps difficult for us when much of our current energies are directed at trolley waits. However such an approach is offered as a useful addition to the armamentarium of policy targeting trolley waits. If the public health message is seized upon now, the trolley waits of the future will be eased. Although she claimed public health was not a glamorous speciality, she showed some rather glamorous slides of healthy ageing.

Archie Young promulgated some frightening statistics about the loss of muscle strength and, more importantly, “explosive power” as we get older. However he offered the soothing reflection that exercise can afford 10 –20 years rejuvenation.

His colleague, Susie Dinan explained the practicalities of prescribing an exercise programme for older people. Jackie Morris, Chair of the SIG, rounded up by pointing out how the theme of healthy ageing is linked to what many of the group feel is the role closest to the heart: treating people in nursing homes and preventing older people from getting there. Points raised in the discussion included the immediate need to promote the healthy ageing of the over 65’s as this population will be 85 in 20 years time. The lack of data on the effects of exercise in the over 80s was noted.

Yvonne Challiner