Asking the Big Questions in Dublin’s Fair City – Part 1

Mary Ni Lochlainn is an Academic Clinical Fellow in Geriatric Medicine. She works at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

This February marked the first, hopefully of many, Biogerontology for Clinicians International Conference, held at the state-of-the-art Mercer Institute of Successful Ageing (MISA) at St. James’ Hospital, Dublin. Hosted by the inimitable Professor Rose Anne Kenny, of Trinity College Dublin, and staff of The Irish Longitudinal Study of Ageing (TILDA), the programme boasted twelve expert speakers across a day and a half, with the aim of putting recent advances in biology in context with the pathology of ageing. The idea was to bring together leaders in ageing from various backgrounds, to ‘generate meaningful collaborative, translational approaches with significant potential strategic value to service users.’ And it certainly achieved those aims.

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.