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Congratulations to all BGS members who were successful in obtaining a clinical excellence award. We nominated seven geriatricians for Bronze awards. Of these, three were successful.

In addition, a further three geriatricians obtained awards without BGS support. The figures for Silver/Gold awards were 5 successes out of 9 nominations with a further 5 awardees who are listed on the nominal role as being geriatricians. Geriatricians who were successful but did not have BGS support either failed to ask for it, were not members of the BGS, or were those whose principal national activities were in other areas. I shall be holding a Question and Answer session at the Spring meeting on National Awards.

General Medical Council Reforms
The BGS has made its response to the Donaldson report and we await developments in the New Year. At the RCP Geriatrics Committee the lay members spoke strongly in favour of periodic re-examination of specialists as a way to confirming that they continue to have an adequate knowledge base. I think this will be a difficult argument to counter if it emerges as a concrete proposal.

Continuing Professional Development
There seems little doubt that the present rather laid-back approach to CPD will also be tightened up to something more than attending 50 hours of talks (at the moment there is an unofficial expectation but no real requirement to stay awake during the presentations). We welcome Professor Alan Sinclair as the new Director of CPD, taking over from Ian Taylor. Alan has many new ideas including web-based learning and will be presenting these to UKMC next year. The plan is that the BGS comes up with its own scheme before we are prescribed to by the Federation of Royal Colleges, although no doubt, our suggestions will have to dovetail broadly with those of other medical specialties.

Modernising Medical Careers
I expect that many of you are gearing up for the training schemes which will be introduced next year. Trainees hoping to enter the specialty must be particularly concerned when faced with what is really an untried system. One can also be certain that not all the glitches will be sorted out in time (it is always this way). If it is any comfort to trainers and trainees I can draw your attention to North America where national matching schemes appear to work and to the fact that we did survive the last change a decade ago when the Registrar and Senior Registrar grades were merged.

Reconfiguration...
...another new buzz word. Sir George Alberti wishes the profession to support his plans to reconfigure acute services into fewer but more technically advanced hospitals. This was also the focus of discussion at the Older People’s Forum at the Department of Health which is chaired by Prof Ian Philp. He tabled a paper which focussed on the theme of “Care nearer to home” - a concept that nobody really could disagree with. We made the point that if more people were kept at home, then those getting into hospital are likely to have more serious and complex needs and that the need for geriatricians in the acute hospital would not diminish. The difficult task is to ensure that plans are not used as a way of denying older people admission to acute hospitals and regional centres when they need it and that we do not end up having to treat older people in units which are suffering from under investment. We have been there before.

From One Island to Another
I understand island hopping is an enjoyable way of spending a holiday in the Aegean or the Caribbean. I chose a rather more stressful method by flying to the islands of Taiwan and Malta to give lectures. In Taiwan I spoke at the World Congress of Internal Medicine on prescribing in later life at the geriatric medicine session. I was fascinated by a Japanese speaker in my session who described a network of his “anti-ageing” clinics. Perhaps something to think about for our more entrepreneurial members! The day before, I had joined Drs Forsyth, Oliver, Kelleher and Martin at the Taiwan Veterans’ Hospital where they were concluding their teaching tour. They appeared to have had an enjoyable and stimulating time and the concluding dinner was accompanied by numerous “bottoms-up”. On the subject of Chinese banquets I learned a new skill – how to eat a lamb chop with chop-sticks.

Malta is a small island with a medical school that has been in existence for over 300 years. I was invited by Peter Ferry, a Keele MSc graduate (and therefore a fine fellow) to talk on the place of geriatric medicine in the acute hospital. Presently they work in separate facilities with all the attendant disadvantages that those of us who have been around a bit will remember. There were a number of interesting talks in my session on prescribing, visual problems and Peter’s special interest of Parkinson’s Disease. The photograph shows me outside the Presidential palace after a private tour and in the evening the President of Malta was guest of honour at the Conference dinner. He obviously enjoyed himself as he did not leave until very late. Protocol dictates that we had to stay until he left by which time I had difficulty in keeping my eyes open. The ties between Malta and the UK are close and will now be strengthened by the Malta Geriatrics Society’s membership of EUGMS.

This newsletter contains information on the merits of Brighton for our Spring Conference. This promises to be a great event and I hope to see you there.

Peter Crome