Education, Training and Careers

This year’s BGS Rising Star Award for Research has been jointly awarded to Dr Richard Dodds and Dr Atul Anand. Richard is an Honorary Consultant Geriatrician at Newcastle Hospitals and an Intermediate Clinical Fellow at the NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre.

The Fragility Fracture Network has just published the second edition entitled Orthogeriatrics- The Management of Older Patients with Fragility Fractures.

There has been a significant focus on UK care homes following COVID-19. Care homes have had to quickly adapt their working practices, to keep their residents and staff safe. Approximately 400,000 older people are currently living in UK care homes.

To help me (and hopefully you) adapt to this rapidly changing practice, I have collated some useful advice from experts in their field into this two-part blog.

To help me (and hopefully you) adapt to this rapidly changing practice, I have collated some useful advice from experts in their field into this two-part blog.

Every person can recall a few turning points in their life. One of the turning points in my own professional life was becoming the Chair of the BGS England Council.

Over 850,000 people in the UK have dementia, many of whom struggle with eating and drinking issues affecting nutritional status, due to changes in memory, motor skills, appetite, taste perception, dysphagia and food preferences.

EAMA (The European Academy for Medicine of Ageing) is an advanced postgraduate course in geriatric medicine designed to inspire and develop future leaders in academic geriatrics and older people’s healthcare across Europe.

This year’s BGS Rising Star Award for Research has been jointly awarded to Dr Atul Anand and Dr Richard Dodds. Atul is a newly appointed consultant geriatrician at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, and Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Here he discusses his research into the cardiovascular care of older adults. 

HIV/AIDS taught us the importance of public sex education. Now, COVID-19 teaches us the need for public death education.

I can feel an approaching pandemic in use of the word failure. It started with failure to plan, failure to supply PPE and economic failure. There is talk of failure to support frail older people and other vulnerable groups. 

Do put October 11-13th in your calendar now for 2021 in Athens. As a result, the Congresses in London 2021 and Helsinki 2022 have each now moved one year onwards. However, this year’s dates, October 7-9th 2020, will be put to good use as we are providing: COVID-19 in Europe: A Virtual Congress.

The COVID-19 outbreak has meant a change for everyone’s working patterns and rapidly. In my case, due to an underlying medical condition, this has meant remote working. 

Sarcopenia is a hot topic in research and clinical practice for anyone caring for older people. It is common, and is associated with multiple adverse outcomes that we all see in everyday practice including falls, fractures, prolonged hospitalization, loss of independence and earlier death.

I love being a doctor and hospitals have long been something of a comfort zone; predictable, with protocols, and plans, and SOPs. To me, they often feel more controlled than the unpredictable world outside.