How was your BGS Autumn Meeting 2017?

David Scott is a 78 year old retiree from Teacher Education with type 2 diabetes and heart failure. In retirement he has developed a strong interest in patient engagement issues. These are engaged with via the Alzheimer’s Society, NiHR (specialist group on Ageing) Age UK and the Stem Cell Bank. He attended the BGS Autumn Meeting 2017 as a patient representative. Register for the BGS Spring Meeting, 11 – 13 April at NCC in Nottingham.

How was your BGS Autumn Meeting 2017? I enjoyed meeting a lot of people with plenty of experience and don’t the Geriatricians look young these days!  Remember that I am 78 years plus. What about that location? Very intimidating on first arrival but once in your allocated space, superb facilities. Plenty of toilets, plenty of overall space, good catering – with alternative if you didn’t mind going a bit further. Found the steps down between levels quite hard but recognise the need to do your daily exercise!  One or two smaller rooms got a bit crowded for some presentations but, in general, presentations well supported.

Autumn Speakers Series: Under what circumstances, and in what ways, is a quality improvement collaborative likely to succeed in a care home setting?

Dr Reena Devi is a research fellow in the Division of Medical Sciences and Graduate Entry Medicine at the University of Nottingham. She is working on the PEACH (‘ProactivE heAlthcare for older people living in Care Homes) study, which is led by Dr Adam Gordon, and funded by the Dunhill Medical Trust. She will be speaking at the upcoming BGS Autumn Meeting in London. She tweets @_DrReenaDevi 

Improving healthcare services delivered to older people is high on the national agenda. Nationwide initiatives are currently focusing on this, for example, six of the Vanguard projects set up in response to the 5 year forward view are specifically devoted to delivering new models of healthcare into care homes. Smaller scale initiatives are also being carried out in local settings, such as the PEACH project.

The PEACH project is using improvement science to bridge the gap between what we know and what we do in terms of the healthcare services delivered to care homes in South Nottinghamshire. The project is working with 4 clinical commissioning groups and their associated healthcare and care home providers, and is focusing on bringing healthcare services closer in-line with the Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) model of care.

Why the BGS Fringe?

Muna Al Jawad is a Consultant Geriatrician at Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton. Here she discusses the BGS Fringe which will be taking place at the BGS Autumn Meeting in London on 23 November. She tweets @OPWhisperer

The idea for the BGS Fringe comes from an emotion: Frustration, and a cause: Resistance. Frustration first. I realise this might be heresy (especially on a blog for the BGS) but the national conference really frustrates me. Geriatricians are the funniest, quirkiest and most humble of doctors. Lots of us chose geriatrics because we want to work with geriatricians. Of all the hospital specialists, we pride ourselves on being the most holistic, we see aim to see our patients as human beings, within their network of family and carers. “Aha!” the geriatrician will say on a ward round, “I know Mrs Jones, she loves Elvis and has a watch with a cat on it” (I actually said that last week).

Autumn Speakers Series: What is geriatric rehabilitation? Towards a unifying concept

Romke van Balen is an Elderly Care Physician in Rotterdam and Senior Researcher in Leiden. His main field of interest is geriatric rehabilitation. He will be speaking at the upcoming BGS Autumn Meeting in London.

Although geriatric rehabilitation in most countries is considered to belong to the core tasks of geriatricians, there is no consensus about definition and target groups of patients.

Decades ago, the Boston Working Group defined geriatric rehabilitation as a multidisciplinary set of evaluative, diagnostic and therapeutic interventions whose purpose it is to restore functional ability or enhance residual functional capacity in elderly people with disabling impairments. When looking at this definition, one wonders if it separates geriatric rehabilitation from the general aim of geriatric medicine. Only palliative care clearly has another aim.

Autumn Speakers Series: Benchmarking Practice in UK Long-term care, can we make it work?

Adam Gordon is Clinical Associate Professor in Medicine of Older People at the University of Nottingham and a Consultant Geriatrician at Derby Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. He is a specialist advisor to the East Midlands Academic Health Sciences Network Patient Safety Collaborative on Care Homes and will be speaking at the upcoming BGS Autumn Meeting in London. He tweets at @adamgordon1978

Contrary to what might be gleaned from the lay media, the quality of care received by residents in care homes – whether from care home or National Health Service staff – is frequently exceptional.  Care home residents are amongst the most complex recipients of care within the health and social care system and so they can stretch even the most capable and dedicated of staff. It is therefore, perhaps, unsurprising that things do not always go to plan – even in the best of homes. There are also, undoubtedly, examples of care homes where things go wrong more frequently – where shortcomings in care are not so much sporadic, as systematic. This is unacceptable.