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Saturday, 8th July saw the Royal College of Physicians (London) hosting their second Public Open Day, which I attended on behalf of the Society. Armed with our new exhibition stand and a modest selection of literature, nearly 600 members of the public came through the doors to find out more about the various branches of medicine.

There were some 30 stands present, from Diabetes to the Medical Women’s Federation, and we were all kept fairly busy handling questions from the obvious like “what is geriatric medicine?”, to the less easy ones like “I wonder if you could give me an opinion…”. Not being medically qualified gave me a simple escape route, though I discovered later that many stands which were manned by doctors did have quite a lot of this to deal with. That aside, the curiosity of the public is obvious, from retired chemists enquiring about membership to fresh faced students just about to start medical school and keen to find out more about our specialty.

RCP Officers and staff were also in attendance, from the President downwards, all mucking in to ensure that visitors had a good time, which by the feedback received, they seemed to. There were also a goodly number of the College’s Patient and Carer Network folk present, taking the time to make themselves known to the exhibitors and visitors alike.

Not quite knowing what to expect of the day I represented the Society on my own, despite one or two offers of help. With hindsight I should have accepted those offers in advance, as pretty much all of the other stands had a mixture of clinicians and helpers present, though I must express my thanks to Dr Adrian Wagg, who just happened to be manning the stand next to ours and was able to step in to answer the occasional fiendish question.

One measure of a successful event is how quickly the time passes, and it certainly seemed to fly by on the day, so I am looking forward to participating in the College’s third open day, planning for which is already in hand.

Alex Mair
BGS Chief Executive