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I have just reached the midpoint of my two year term as President of the European Geriatric Medicine Society (EUGMS).

The EUGMS is an umbrella organisation which brings together the national societies of all the European Union and EFTA (Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) countries and has observers from Israel, Turkey, aspirant nations to the EU and the IAGG, UEMS and EAMA. EUGMS is a veritable alphabet soup which aims to be inclusive but is strongly focused on the needs of speciality practice in geriatric medicine.

The Society works hard to influence the European Commission and its offshoots through its policy committee and during the last 12 months we have had some fruitful dialogue with the European Medicines Agency (EMEA). We have launched a campaign to combat the poor representation of older people in clinical trials on the back of recent European legislation governing medicines in children. Our aim is to mirror the developments in paediatric medicine and create a geriatric medicine committee within EMEA.

One of the main aims of EUGMS is to foster the development of the speciality of geriatric medicine across Europe. The specialty has developed in a very heterogeneous style, or not at all, in Europe. EUGMS promotes geriatric medicine, by bringing the benefits of the specialty to the attention of policy makers in Europe, helping local clinicians develop their services and offering high quality education events. The European Silver Paper on the future of geriatric medicine, created from a meeting in Wroclaw in Poland in September 2008, is an example of the first and can be found on the EUGMS website. In 2008 EUGMS participated in a training course for geriatricians in Estonia. Similarly we are investigating the possibility of providing educational courses for primary care practitioners in Greece and Poland in the near future.

Our major Congress in Copenhagen in 2008 attracted nearly 1000 participants and seemed to indicate that we had turned a corner in the provision of professional development for the specialty in Europe. The hubbub at the breaks between sessions and around the poster displays was testament to how much European geriatricians had in common and how much they could learn from each other.

Despite the fact that Paris will host the world congress of the IAGG, where EUGMS will be participating with 3 symposia, there will be a separate EUGMS meeting run jointly with the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, 17-18 September, on the topic of Palliative Medicine and End of Life Care Issues, including the launch of new WHO guidance on Palliative Care (www.rcpsg.ac.uk or www.eugms.org). 2010 will be the tenth anniversary of the founding of the EUGMS and our major congress will be hosted by my successor Prof. Des O’Neil in Dublin, September 29th – 1st October. 2011 will see what will now be an annual congress hosted in Malaga by the Spanish Geriatrics Society.

British geriatricians have a lot to offer, and to learn from, their European counterparts and I would encourage you to participate fully in the Glasgow and Dublin meetings. It is vital that EUGMS engages successfully with its national partners, one of the reasons that I instituted a European Presidents’ meeting in Copenhagen. We take this engagement so seriously that we have already appeared at the German Society Meeting in December 2008 and will be holding our Academic, Executive and Full Board meetings at the BGS meeting in Bournemouth where we will be co-hosting the symposium on dementia on 1st April. So come and talk to us if you would like more information about forthcoming meetings or the work of the EUGMS in general.

Paul Knight
President, EUGMS

BGS Newsletter, March 2009
Issue 20 ISSN 1748-6343 20