Some things in life are free!

Cliff Kilgore is a Consultant Nurse for Intermediate Care and Older People within Dorset Healthcare NHS Trust and he is also a Visiting Fellow to Bournemouth University. He is Chair of the BGS Nurses and Allied Healthcare Professionals Council. He also is a member of the BGS Clinical Quality Steering Group. He tweets @kilgore_cliff

Many of our readers will know that the BGS has been at the forefront of promoting older people’s healthcare and wellbeing for many years. In fact, we celebrated 70 years of this in March. Leading the way for older people has enabled the BGS to have great influence on many aspects of policy and guidance including Fit for Frailty, The Silver Book, Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA), as well as ever increasing influence on training and development of all clinicians. The BGS has long recognised the importance of developing trainees and to support this has offered many benefits to its members including free membership for medical students and foundation doctors, study grants and sponsorship and support of research projects.

Sometimes good things really do come for free!

Mary Ni Lochlainn is an Academic Clinical Fellow in Geriatric Medicine. BGS Junior Members’ Representative and on the BGS Trainee’s Council. She works at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich @younggeris. Her email is marynilochlainn@gmail.com

Membership of the British Geriatrics Society (BGS) is open to all medical students, student nurses,
student therapists, nurses and AHPs in a preceptor year and Foundation Year doctors and is completely FREE!

I joined the BGS as a first year medical student and thus have benefited from free membership for quite a few years now, and would highly recommend it to all those who are interested in the healthcare of older adults.

You do not have to have your mind set on specialising in geriatric medicine; as we all know the proportion of people older than 65 is growing faster than any other age group (WHO, 2002). In the United Kingdom the population aged 65 years and older is set to increase by two-thirds to reach 15.8 million in 2031 (Wise, 2010). Geriatric medicine is set to become the largest and most exciting specialty in medicine! Beyond that, healthcare professionals in all other specialties (medical, surgical and the rest) will be dealing with more and more older adults in their services.

New online portal for BGS members

Geraint Collingridge is the British Geriatrics Society’s Director of Professional Learning & Development.  You can contact him on conferences@bgs.org.uk.

In this blog, Geraint outlines some of the ways in which the Society’s communications with members are going to change over the next few months.

Here at Marjory Warren House, the BGS secretariat have been busy behind the scenes on an important project to help improve our membership services. As a secretariat of 11 people managing over 3,000 members, we’ve faced challenges when faced with the positive situation of a growing membership and increased interest from a broader professional user base: nurses, physiotherapists, pharmacists and GPs are all coming under the umbrella of the professionals providing care to older people.