I am writing this in a state of mild elation, immediately on my return from the Spring Meeting in Birmingham.

The meeting was an unqualified success with 530 delegates. Alistair Ritch, who had organised the Birmingham Meeting in 1988 and had gone on to be a very successful Secretary for the Society during my time as BGS Treasurer, had a small and capable organising committee consisting of Ros Grant, Nigel Page and Jed Rowe, who produced a highly innovative and inter-disciplinary programme, maintaining an excellent standard throughout the two days. The International Conference Centre in Birmingham had superb facilities, and the organisation worked like clockwork. The nature of the Spring Meetings has certainly changed dramatically over the years. The time when a university site or small centre could accommodate the Spring Meeting, I’m afraid, are long gone, and in the future we will have to concentrate on centres with comparable conference facilities to that of Birmingham. Although this will translate into the overall costs of meeting, we can expect also to increase the standard and send out a signal of the seriousness of our specialty and the importance of our scientific meetings.

The Spring Meeting dinner was held in the city museum following a civic reception. I am sure all the delegates were highly impressed with Birmingham’s regeneration. Those of us at the dinner were reminded of Birmingham’s history by Dame Rachel Whitehouse, who gave a fascinating talk and was, herself, an example of successful ageing, being a youthful 80 years of age!

Grandees of geriatrics
I had great pleasure at the dinner, in bestowing the Founder’s Medal on Prof Tom Arie. Tom’s hugely successful career was characterised by his ability to bring out the best in people and work between disciplines. It was fitting that one of his protégés, Prof Shah Ebrahim, started the scientific meeting with the Sheldon Lecture on Social Medicine of Old Age in the 21st Century. Shah, who was at one time a card carrying geriatrician, is now Professor of Epidemiology of Ageing at the University of Bristol. He is one of the leading intellectuals in medicine, and presented his innovative work on using genetic polymorphisms to test the effects of environmental factors on health. This truly revolutionary approach to epidemiology is likely, in the long run, to be extremely valuable to our specialty. It was great to start the meeting with such an intellectually challenging presentation.

The other luminary at the meeting was Peter Overstall, to whom I presented the President’s Medal. One of the pleasures of being President is being given the opportunity to honour members of our society, who have not had the opportunity to hold one of the top three offices, but nevertheless who have made a major contribution to the specialty. Peter is a direct contemporary of mine, becoming a consultant in Norman Exton Smith’s department in St Pancreas at more or less the same time I took my appointment in Liverpool in 1977. It was rather daunting realising he has recently retired. I classify Peter as a physician-scholar, a phenomenon threatened with extinction under the new contract! I think it is unlikely in the future, that we will find a single individual at the forefront of such diverse fields as continence, falls and Parkinson’s disease, to do important work in all these areas. In addition, Peter has been innovative in medical education, which has made him one of the most popular trainers in geriatrics in the country. He is still involved in producing educational CD’s which are of high quality and relevance to our speciality. It was great , also to see Rod Brookes and Peter Mayer at the Birmingham meeting, both of whom have given long and distinguished service to the society, and who are still making contributions to their local meetings.

There were so many highlights that, in a way, it would be invidious to single out any particular contribution, but I would like to thank the pharmaceutical industry for sponsoring the meeting and putting on some excellent satellite symposia, contributing to the overall high academic standard and value of the meeting. The event provided a good balance between CME and scientific content, and it was good to see many younger members of our profession making their first scientific presentations at the meeting. I briefly popped my head into the Trainees’ meeting and found a vigorous and challenging group with over 100 trainees attending; they very nearly outnumbered the 200 consultants who attended the conference. It is particularly pleasing that we are attracting more members of the allied professions to our meeting, but perhaps a bit disturbing that we do not seem to be attracting as many of the younger consultants as we did previously. May I urge all our members to try to attend at least one of our scientific meetings each year. For those of you who have not attended for a while, you will be surprised how relevant the content is and how pleasant the company and networking. I can guarantee, after attending a meeting, you will go back only refreshed, and with new ideas.

Prior to the Birmingham Meeting I had an extremely busy period with a lot of travel. I was especially pleased to be invited to the Welsh British Geriatrics Society Meeting at St David’s Park in North Wales. My talk on the future of geriatrics provoked a lot of discussion and I was overwhelmed by the warmth of my reception. It was also gratifying to see the great attendance and vigorous participation in members of the Welsh branch. I having been born in North Wales, Ed Wilkins was very kind to bestow on me a title which I much value, the first Welsh President of the British Geriatrics Society! Given that I had been in Ireland the previous week, speaking to Irish trainees in Dublin, where I was presented with an Irish rugby shirt and dubbed the honorary Irishman, I look forward to strengthening my connections further, when I visit the Scottish British Geriatrics Society in May!

Back at the business end
We are making very considerable headway, translating the strategic plan for the Society into working business plans for all committees of the Society. Each committee now lists it’s objectives, identifies how those objectives are going to be met, plus the resource that is needed, and a clear target for every project, with a likely completion date, and at each committee meeting progress is monitored and status of what has been achieved is noted. I hope this method of working will bring increased discipline and effectiveness to the Society’s operations.

EUGMS
Like our editor, I would celebrate the fact that the EUGMS secretariat is now hosted by the BGS Secretariat, and I congratulate Paul Knight and Alex Mair on their successful bid, midst stiff competition, for the BGS to host the EUGMS secretariat. As our pioneer EAMA graduate, Simon Conroy says, it is only right that the home of the geriatrics specialty should be at the heart of Europe-wide policy formation in European geriatrics, daunting as that task may be.

Finally, I am sorry to report that Richard Lynham has had a further period of poor health and has been in hospital for some two months. I know the society will send him all our best wishes and hope that he has a speedy recovery.

Jerry Playfer