Loneliness; A public health epidemic

Helen Stokes-Lampard is Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), the UK’s largest Medical Royal College, representing over 52,000 family doctors across the UK. She is a part-time GP partner at The Westgate Practice in Lichfield, Staffordshire, and was the Head of Primary Care Teaching (undergraduate) in the Medical School of the University of Birmingham until becoming RCGP Chair. She will be speaking at the Loneliness in Older People and its Impact on Health event on 13 June at Wellcome Collection in London.

As a GP in the Midlands, I see patients in my surgery day after day with a variety of different health needs. We GPs are privileged to be the cornerstone of our communities, and the vast majority – over 85% of people – come to see their GP at least once a year.

Last year, at my speech to RCGP Annual Conference, I introduced the world to my patient, Enid, a character who every GP will recognise from their own surgery and their own community. My inspiration for this character stems from the type of patient which every GP will be aware of: she’s 84, she has hypertension and type 2 diabetes, and has intermittent flares of osteoarthritis pain in both her hips. Most significantly, she recently lost Brian, her husband of 62 years.

The Wild Wild Southwest: BGS Regional Meeting, Bath

Alasdair Miller is a ST6 Specialist Registrar in Geriatric Medicine at Royal United Hospital, Bath.

In the warm spell between the two flurries of snow and ice which have buffeted the UK in recent weeks, Bath’s Kingswood School Sports Pavilion played host to the Southwest Regional Meeting of the BGS. The event attracted a wide variety of attendees from different walks of Geriatric Medicine across the southwest- a multidisciplinary crowd ranging from junior trainees to eminent seniors, and with strong representation from both community and hospital teams. The day’s remit: to share learning and innovation from across the patch, update ourselves on topical and important areas within Geriatric Medicine, and foster links, cooperation and friendship with colleagues.

Top of the POPS: the future of perioperative care

Jason Cross is an Advanced Nurse Practitioner for the Proactive Care of Older People Undergoing Surgery (POPS) team at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital and is a member of the BGS POPS Special Interest Group. He Tweets at @jdcross1970

It’s been an exciting and challenging three years since I last wrote in the BGS blog, and while the messages haven’t changed much, the field of perioperative medicine continues to gather momentum.

In 2012 I wrote about the publication of An Age Old Problem (2011) and Access All Ages (2012) and how both these reports highlighted the deficiencies in surgical care for the older patient, and how geriatrician input was cited as an essential component to improving these issues.

These recommendations have been further supported by the recent publication of the new perioperative pathway vision document from the Royal College of Anaesthetists, titled Perioperative Medicine: The Pathway to Better Surgical Care. Here we note an emphasis on collaborative working with a focus on improving the outcomes and efficiency throughout the surgical pathway.