President’s Message
Hello Colleagues,
As another year wraps up you are no doubt feeling like me and are wondering where that time went. 2022 was the year we started returning to ‘normal’ with the occasional blip along the way that reminds us of how life has changed. I hope the past months and lifting of restrictions also allowed you to travel and re-connect with family and friends.
My year has been dotted with opportunities to meet colleagues in person. Last week we held our final end-of-year Council meeting in Melbourne, the first time Council had met face-to-face since December 2019. We all appreciated the value of what these meetings provide – opportunities to not only plan and strategise as a group, but also a chance for informal work conversations as well as personal catch ups. We were lucky enough to be joined in the morning by health economist Mr Stephen Duckett who has held leadership roles in the Department of Health and Aged Care. Stephen reminded us that the best way to influence policy as a society is to identify the issues that policymakers feel we can help with. Much of the discussion that followed focused on this, looking at very practical ways we can most effectively target those in Government with solutions to providing better health care for older people.
Back in September I joined Queensland colleagues for their educational weekend, in late October I was in the Barossa Valley South Australia and the following week in New Zealand for their respective Division meetings. For me, the best part of this job has been the opportunity to hear the “stories” of fellow geriatricians and their path to where they are now. I particularly enjoyed the way the State Divisions included their advanced trainees in the weekend activities. Seeing people in person also reminded me of one of the great strengths of our society – it’s diversity.
It has been a year since we devised our 2022-2024 Strategic Workplan and we are happy to report progress across each Pillar. We have almost completed a survey of Heads of Department in Geriatric Medicine in Australia and New Zealand to get a better insight into the geriatric medicine services that are provided by our public hospitals. In the future it would be valuable to know about the services geriatricians provide in the private system as well.
The Commonwealth are working on their plans for the new home support program which they plan to launch in mid-2024. From our point of view the most important thing we want them to think about is how they can help older people navigate the system, particularly if they have cognitive impairment or don’t have someone who can advocate for them and that during the initial assessment there needs to be the ability to “case manage” people until a plan has been put in place.
The Out of Hospital Care Special Interest Group (SIG) has been launched with the Dementia SIG to be started early next year. The two most achievable outcomes of these SIGs are educational activities such as webinars, which have shown to attract large audiences, and the sharing of details on models of care.
We continue to focus on ways to engage our members and ensure we are supporting you with useful information and benefits. In 2023 we hope to engage new members in our various committees – we have a broad membership which offers an enormous resource of expertise that can help us shape our submissions, consultations and position statements.
Next year we also plan to conduct a membership survey that will help us to further understand how we can serve you all. I encourage you to all participate and tell us more about what you want from your society.
Wishing you all a very happy and safe holiday season with your friends and family. I hope you are all able to enjoy some well-deserved rest and relaxation and I look forward to working with you all in 2023.
Best Wishes
Vasi Naganathan
