BGS: Workforce

The BGS today launches a new report, ‘The case for more geriatricians: Strengthening the workforce to care for an ageing population’. Geriatricians are specialists in healthcare for older people. While many professions are involved in the care of older people, geriatricians provide leadership of geriatric medicine services, particularly focusing on those patients with frailty and complex long-term conditions. This publication reveals significant variation across the UK in the number of geriatricians available to care for older people. The report indicates that while there are 282 geriatricians for approximately every million people over the age of 65 years old in London, there are only 96 for a similar population in the East Midlands. This means that there are parts of the country where the lack of geriatricians results in older people waiting longer to receive a level of care that is inferior to what they would expect and to what their clinicians would wish to provide.

The BGS has published a report from a survey of its members describing the experiences of working through the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. With respondents representing over twenty different professions working in acute, community and primary care, it is believed to be the only survey capturing the full breadth of multidisciplinary health professionals’ experiences caring for older people across the four nations.