President’s Message

Hello Colleagues,

I write to you from chilly Sydney where it seems winter has taken hold and the rain continues to be relentless. While COVID-19 still circulates through the older community, many geriatricians continue to shoulder extra responsibilities and carry heavy workloads. I know a lot of you have family and close friends overseas, and as our borders open and we start to travel more I hope you have had opportunities to catch up with loved ones.

As we enter mid-year, it’s a time to reflect on the progress we have made so far and the ways in which we are engaging our members. Firstly, I  acknowledge the commitment and hard work of the organising committee of the ASM (held 8-10 June) from Perth. With over 600 attendees, the fully virtual conference successfully presented an engaging line-up of speakers who shared ideas, innovations and discussion from Australia and overseas.

Our AGM held a few weeks ago marked the introduction of four new members to Council – Heather Lane, Ruth Hubbard, Tracey Macmillan and Aparna Arjunan. I warmly welcome these Councillors and am enormously proud to confirm that women now outnumber men on Council, with 53 percent of positions held by women. Diversity is our strength, and we need to continue fostering a committee that reflects the varied backgrounds of our members. Thank you to Lucy Dakin (chair of GMET) and Carl Hangar who stepped down from Council. A big thank you also to John Maddison for his many years of services on Council but particularly for his leadership as President-Elect, President and this year Immediate Past President.

I welcome our new Treasurer Chia Chong as well as Owen Davies who will now Chair the Clinical Issues Committee and thank their predecessors Rob O’Sullivan and Anthony French respectively for their contributions. I am always mindful that all office bearers and committee members are volunteers and I am grateful for the valuable time they contribute to the Society.

Our Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) Working Group will soon share a document  on VAD. I think this paper will be an extremely useful resource for all geriatricians on a complex issue that will involve many of us in the future. Progress has also been made by the Perioperative Special Interest Group with the finalisation of a modified Delphi survey. The results from this survey will inform the development of a minimum clinical dataset for preoperative CGA that can be used as part of routine care of the older patient being assessed for surgery. The Policy and Planning Committee have made some real progress this year with the updating and publishing of four position statements. These statements are an important part of our work, serving as a guideline for colleagues and I thank the authors and encourage all members to take a look.

Looking ahead to the second half of the year I am pleased that one of our key strategic pillars –  “Development of models of care for the older person,” remains front and centre in driving our activities. The first meeting for the Out of Hospital Care Special Interest Group (OHC SIG) will be held in August 2022. We hope that this SIG will provide support and connect members with an interest in the care of older people living in residential care and in private residences with the purpose of improving health care in these settings. The door is always open if you wish to join this group, please contact admin@anzsgm.org for details.  The Dementia SIG which will also be launched later in the year.

Internally there are several changes on the way. As our activities continue to grow, demand on our staff will increase and in July a part time Administration Officer will join Alison King and the team. We will also start the process of engaging external advisors to assist in developing a plan for ANZSGM to migrate from an incorporated association to a company limited by guarantee. We hope that this move will better reflect the nature of the Society as an organisation representing members across Australia and New Zealand.

Finally,  as I have said before I’m always keen to have informal conversations with colleagues. My presidency has been conducted during a time of online conferences and I look forward to a time when meeting face-to-face is the norm. Until then please feel free to get in touch with your views on any important issues you feel the society should be influencing.

Keep warm

Vasi Naganathan

President

ANZSGM Welcomes New Members

The Society welcomes the following new members who were endorsed at the Council meeting on 7 June 2022:

NSW
Siti Nur Fariza Binti Nordin (AT)
Shivlal David (Full)
Kirstin Emmanuel (AT)
Monica Lin (AT)
Jo-Anne Ponce (AT)
Clarissa Sagi (AT)

Victoria
Navin Amarasinghe (Full)
Arrhchanah Balachandran (AT)
Joseph Ciantar (AT)
Olivia Galante (AT)
Amrina Kaur (AT)
Johanna Lee (AT)
Jacinta Lopez (AT)
Bhagya Mudunna (AT)
Eva Stachnik (AT)
Alicia Lu (AT)

South Australia
Blaire Brewerton (AT)
Kirsten Gibson (AT)
Marina Hayashi (AT)
Kym Huynh (AT)

Queensland
Amy Carpenter (AT)
Theresa Chion (AT)
Tiffany Hoang (AT)
Arun Kannan (AT)
Farah Mohamad Najib (AT)
Sonia Tait (AT)

Northern Territory
Hayley Dugan (AT)

Western Australia
Thomas Erskine (AT)
Heather Jones (AT)
Karen Quinlan (Full)
Nathaneal Sebastian (AT)

New Zealand
Victoria Gibson (Full)
Ruth Ironside (AT)
Kai Yuan Low (AT)
Yiling Zhang (AT)

ANZSGM Welcome to New Council Members

Council welcomed four new members at the Annual General Meeting on 17 June 2022 including nominated members Aparna Arjunan and Heather Lane, along with Ruth Hubbard and Tracey McMillan who are in co-opted positions. 

Aparna Arjunan is a consultant geriatrician at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital/STARS (Surgical Treatment and Rehabilitation Service) & Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane. She has been active in the Queensland Division for the past few years and is the current Secretary. 

Heather Lane is a consultant geriatrician at the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth, WA. She has been a long time contributor to the Society, having served on the GMET Committee and the Western Australia Division, where she has recently been appointed Division President.

Ruth Hubbard is a consultant geriatrician at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane and a Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Queensland. She also teaches on the annual Statewide Clinical Examination Preparation Program for Basic Trainees undertaking the RACP examination. 

Tracey McMillan is a consultant geriatrician at the Auckland City Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand. She has been active in the New Zealand Division for the past few years as well as being the recent chair of the College’s New Zealand Advanced Training Sub-Committee. 

Geriatricians acknowledged in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List

 – Dr Sarah Nicole Hilmer AM for her significant service to clinical and geriatric pharmacology.

 – Dr Hugh Fairfull-Smith OAM for service to geriatric medicine, and

 – Professor Maria Antoinette Fiatarone Singh AM for significant service to geriatric medicine, to research, and to education.

The full list can be found here.

ANZSGM New Zealand Retreat

Annual Scientific Meeting 2022 Report

By Dr Fiona Connelly
2022 Conference Convenor

Image by Dr Amelia Crabtree who captured storyboards of many of the conference sessions. All story boards can be downloaded from the ASM website.  

This year’s ASM followed the Golden Jubilee theme of “Redefining Geriatric Giants, a reflection over the changes in Geriatric care, research and services over the last fifty years”.

The uncertainty of COVID-19 meant that it was the first fully virtual conference; and while it was not the preferred format, there were many benefits including more accessible content, increased access to breakfast sessions, the ability to catch up on concurrent sessions at different times and access to content in the months ahead. We even got to meet the pets of the ANZSGM! The ASM attracted the highest number of registrations a Perth ASM has ever had.

International speakers Matteo Cesari and Bruno Vellas shared some great insights into global approaches on supporting healthy ageing through the Integrated Care for Older People approach (ICOPE). They also joined an entertaining panel discussion with our local expert, Prof Ruth Hubbard, on what to do about sarcopenia in practice.

Our Australasian speakers Joe Ibrahim and Michal Boyd delivered a provocative and engaging plenary on residential aged care, encouraging us to step up and stand up for the fundamental changes needed in residential care.

 A wide range of other topics were also presented by fabulous speakers highlighting sub specialty areas of geriatric care, as well as an excellent update on long COVID from Dr Claire Steves in Oxford and an engaging plenary on Indigenous health. The breakfast sessions attracted great numbers and Robert Prowse gave us a wonderful recount of the society’s history to date with some surprising facts along the way.

Be sure to catch up on any content you missed on the conference website, content will be available for the next six months.

I extend a big thanks to everyone that submitted abstracts and presented at the conference. The quality of research was fantastic and included great work from medical students and junior doctors as well as our advanced trainees and senior colleagues. Congratulations to this years prizes winners: Dr Stephanie Than Career Investigator Award, Dr Sok Shin Yap for the RM Gibson Prize and Dr James Fletcher for the poster prize – see the winning poster here.

A special thanks must also go to everyone whose hard work allowed the conference to run smoothly and with great success. This includes, but is not limited to, all of the speakers, the Science and Research committee for reviewing the abstracts, judges, session hosts, the professional conference organiser; Arinex and the very talented Amelia Crabtree for her wonderful artwork which captured each session’s content so creatively. Deepest gratitude also goes to the Perth conference organising committee who have been working hard on this conference for the last three years and rolled graciously with all the changes and challenges along the way!

The organising committee would like to thank everyone that registered and attended and although we missed our face to face engagement and the gala dinner, we look forward to welcoming you back to Perth in person in 2029!

We look forward to the great line up in Brisbane next year and wish the conveners every success.

Reflecting on 50 years of geriatric medicine

By Dick Sainsbury

“And what’s more, if you don’t improve, I’ll send you to the K wards (geriatric medicine rehab) to work”, were the words used by an old ward sister, very publicly, to a nurse she was admonishing for poor performance in 1982.  I record this incident in my recently published book, All Experience is an Arch, as an example of the negative attitudes towards our specialty that we often encountered in those days.  There were also labels such as ‘bed blocker’, ‘social admission’ and ‘acopia’ which were equally pervasive.  Educating people against negative attitudes to older people was an important function for early geriatricians and although great improvements have been made, we must be ever vigilant as ‘the jungle can close in at any time’.

The 1970s and 1980s were also the times when geriatric medicine was trying to establish its niche, or even whether it was required, as a separate discipline to general medicine.  Most of the few geriatricians in Australasia at the time had completed part of their training in the United Kingdom and had absorbed the principles of the pioneer Marjory Warren and her successors.  It was also a time of sub-specialisation in general medicine which began firstly with cardiology with the advent of coronary care units.  At the same time some units in the United Kingdom, notably Hastings and Hull were running age-related services where all medically ill people in the region were admitted under the geriatric medicine service.  Some general physicians were concerned that geriatric medicine was going to usurp the traditional role of general medicine and this led to some, at times acrimonious discussions.  Gradually these matters resolved as the enthusiasm for age-related services waned and most geriatric services became ‘needs-related’ with an emphasis on rehabilitation, restoration of function and community outreach. The former ASGM, NZGS and IMSANZ can take credit for negotiating these issues.  Among the positives to emerge is the larger number of advanced trainees in both disciplines who can participate both in geriatric medicine and on the acute medical roster.

I have mentioned some of the earlier personalities in New Zealand geriatric medicine in the History of the New Zealand Geriatric Society (NZGS) that I have written for the ANZSGM website but I would like to acknowledge the late Professor John Campbell in particular.  John led research in New Zealand.  He gained international recognition of his work on Fall epidemiology and prevention and his earlier Gisborne community study.  He served a period as Chair of the Medical Council of New Zealand and his advice was regularly sought by the Department of Health in policy making.  Sadly, he died after a rapidly progressive illness in 2016.

The increase in advanced trainees is particularly satisfying. Few were attracted to geriatric medicine in the early 1980s.  The new generation are carrying forward the torch of research.  This is reflected in the high standards of ANZSGM scientific meetings and the continuing rise in the quality of publications.

As I look back, I can appreciate the advances that have been made. I see the specialty as being in very good heart and I look forward to continuing participant.  I am also confident that good services await me should I become a consumer.

Dick’s book “All Experience is an Arch” is available by contacting Dick directly at dsain@xtra.co.nz for $NZ25 plus postage or for those in New Zealand it is available through NZ Booksellers ltd of Oxford NZ. 

Position Statements

Over the past months volunteer members have been working with the Policy and Planning Committee to develop and update several position statements. Thank you to all the authors who have worked on these papers that provide guidance to geriatricians on important clinical issues; we also appreciate the feedback offered by members in the approval process. We encourage you to access these papers and remind you that all position statements can be found here on our website.

Updated Position Statements

• Education in Geriatric Medicine by Dr Desmond Graham and co-authored by Dr Clarissa Sagi and Dr Katie Thorne 
• What is a Geriatrician by Dr John Obeid

New Position Statements

• The Role of the Geriatrician in the Rehabilitation of Older People by Dr Carl Hanger
• Perioperative Care of Older People by Dr Ming Loh

Walking more slowly can be a sign of impending dementia, scientists find

Walking more slowly as you get older could be a sign that you’re at risk of developing dementia.

That’s the key finding from a major Australian and US study of more than 16,800 older people, which showed a decline in both walking speed and cognition are strong predictors of a dementia diagnosis later on. Read the full SMH article here.

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The article refers to research published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association “Association of Dual Decline in Cognition and Gait Speed With Risk of Dementia in Older Adults“. This study can be accessed here.

ANZSGM member Professor Velandai Srikanth, is one of the study authors. He is a Melbourne-based Specialist Geriatrician at Peninsula Health,  Professor of Medicine at Monash University, and the Director of the National Centre for Healthy Ageing. His particular area of interest is in the study of the ageing brain using cohort and twin study designs.

Reporting vaccination information to the Australian Immunisation Register (AIR).

Reporting timely, high quality and accurate vaccination information ensures that the AIR contains a complete and reliable dataset to enable the monitoring of immunisation coverage and administration. It also ensures that individuals have a complete record of their vaccinations that can be provided as evidence for education, employment, and/or travel purposes.

Under the Australian Immunisation Register Act 2015 it is mandatory for vaccination providers to report all COVID-19, influenza, and National Immunisation Program vaccinations to the AIR.

To ensure accurate and complete reporting of vaccination information to the AIR, vaccination providers must provide the following information:

• provider information: provider number, name and contact details
• personal information of the individual vaccinated: Medicare number (if applicable), name, contact details, date of birth and gender
• vaccine information: brand name, dose number and batch number and date of administration.

Batch Numbers
It has been identified that a significant number of AIR records have a batch number that has been recorded incorrectly. Please make sure that you are reporting the correct batch number to the AIR. The Department is aware that some Practice Management Software stores and/or autofill’s previously entered information which can lead to data entry errors, it is important to correct this information prior to submission.

Reporting medical contraindications to the AIR
When reporting a medical contraindication to the AIR is important for eligible health professionals to complete the Australian Immunisation Register Immunisation Medical Exemption (IM011) form in line with the latest clinical guidance in the Australian Immunisation Handbook, for NIP vaccines, or from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation for COVID.

Vaccination providers are reminded not to include any additional information such as clinical notes or test results and/or attach letters when recording a medical contraindication. This may cause delays in processing and if the IM011 form is incomplete, invalid, or unsigned it will be returned to the vaccination provider.

The quickest and easiest way to record all vaccination information is via the AIR site in HPOS or the relevant Practice Management Software.

An Update on The Markers in Neuropsychiatric Disorders Study (The MiND Study)

A simple routine blood test in general practice could be the answer to an earlier dementia diagnosis.

The MiND Study Team at Neuropsychiatry Royal Melbourne Hospital and The University of Melbourne have been busy testing a simple blood test to diagnose younger onset dementia and other neuropsychiatric disorders more accurately and quickly.

At just under two years into the Study, the team are pleased to report that they have recruited over 450 participants across general practices, memory clinics, and medical specialist (neurology, geriatrics, psychiatry) consulting room across Australia.   This is an extremely positive response, particularly given the challenges that COVID-19 has presented.

The Team would like to extend their gratitude to every GP, clinician and health service, who have referred patients to the Study, and to the patients and families who have supported the Study via their ongoing generosity, participation, and heart-felt passion for the cause. This has been instrumental in our recruitment success to date, which will ultimately get us closer to clinical translational outcomes (i.e., a routinely available point of care blood test in the real world. Think of it as a “CRP” for the brain to indicate whether “something neurological is going on”).

The Team is keen to boost recruitment to this important piece of research that could potentially benefit us all, and especially our patients and their families.

If you would like to learn more about the Study, and help the team reduce the delay in diagnosis with a routinely available blood test in general practice to improve outcomes for your patients, families, and the healthcare system, please visit the website HERE or reach out to the team at contact@themindstudy.org<mailto:contact@themindstudy.org

Sepsis Clinical Care Standard

The Australian Commission Safety and Quality in Health care has developed a Sepsis Clinical Care Standard, one of eight projects commissioned under the National Sepsis Program.

The Sepsis Clinical Care Standard and supporting materials have been developed to support improvements in the delivery of sepsis care. The goal of the Sepsis Clinical Care Standard is to ensure that a patient presenting with signs and symptoms of sepsis receives optimal care, from symptom onset through to discharge from hospital and survivorship care. This includes timely recognition of sepsis, early and appropriate antimicrobial therapy and continuity of care from the acute setting through to discharge and survivorship.

Download the Sepsis Clinical Care Standard here

Revised national driver medical standards now available

The revised national driver medical standards Assessing Fitness to Drive are now live on the Austroads website.

As from Wednesday 22 June 2022, all licensing decisions made in relation to medical conditions and disabilities will be made using these standards. Health professionals conducting fitness to drive assessments and providing advice to drivers will also be expected to refer to the new edition.

The redeveloped Austroads website is also now live, offering ready access to the new standards and practical information to support health professionals, drivers and industry. The user-friendly searchable html format includes alerts to highlight the recent changes to the standards as well as links to consumer information.

Thought Leaders on Global Ageing Heading to Sydney in 2029

Sydney will be the host city for the 24th International Association of Gerontology and Geriatric (IAGG) World Congress of Gerontology and Geriatrics in 2029, with a pre Congress Leadership Summit in Queenstown, New Zealand.

ANZSGM supported the Australian Association of Gerontology (AAG) and the New Zealand Association of Gerontology (NZAG) in a significant multi-year bidding effort led by the business events bidding specialists at BESydney to win the bid. 

The decision was made by a vote of the more than 80 IAGG member and the 2029 Congress is expected to attract around 4,500 delegates to Sydney over five days and BESydney estimates it will inject $21.6 million into the local economy.

The quadrennial World Congress of Gerontology and Geriatrics is the largest, most significant
worldwide conference on ageing, sharing the latest science, research, training, technology, and policy
development presented by experts from around the world. Delegates include representatives from
medicine, nursing, allied health, aged care, policy and practice fields, and other disciplines brought
together to address the latest approaches to improving the experience of ageing for ageing and older
people across the globe.

Co-Bid Leaders and AAG Life Members, Professor Julie Byles AO, Global Innovation Chair in Responsive Transitions in Health and Ageing, Newcastle University, and Professor Keith Hill, Director of the Rehabilitation, Ageing and Independent Living (RAIL) research centre, Monash University, jointly stated,

“This bid win is a wonderful outcome for our gerontological and geriatrician communities across Australia and New Zealand. We are honoured to have been selected by our global colleagues to lead this critical conversation about ageing together and ageing well. Importantly, the IAGG World Congress in Sydney in 2029 represents an opportunity for students and early career participants to come together and to form lasting global relationships that will help shape their professional activities into the future.”

IAGG World Congress was last held in Australia in Adelaide, in 1997 and this will be the first time that
Sydney has hosted the Congress. The 23rd IAGG World Congress will be held at the International Convention Centre Sydney (ICC Sydney) from 28 July – 3 August 2029 with a pre-Congress Leadership Summit in Queenstown, New Zealand.

For more information visit the website 

Fragility Fracture Network Global Congress

The meeting will be face to face and offers the opportunity to meet, network and socialise together as a multidisciplinary community. For those unable to travel, a virtual option will be available.

• Workshop Submissions Close – 10 May 2022
• Abstract Submissions Close – 8 July 2022
• Early Bird Registration Closes – 29 July 2022

More  information can be found on the FFN website here

Register online here:

Don’t miss this opportunity to attend the world’s leading multidisciplinary conference on fracture prevention and management.

Australia and New Zealand Hip Fracture Festival

Australia and New Zealand Hip Fracture Festival 

The Australia and New Zealand Hip Fracture Registry (ANZHFR) is pleased to announce the face to face Binational Hip Festival to be held 19 October 2022  (8.30am-5pm) at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. In partnership with the Global Fragility Fracture Network, the ANZHFR invites you to Hip Fest 2022, Joined at the Hip. 

The Festival will offer a forum to explore multidisciplinary teamwork in hip fracture care and highlight examples of best practice. Learn about the Registry and the My Hip/ My Voice consumer project. The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care will be joining us to launch the updated Hip Fracture Care Clinical Care Standard and we will also be announcing the winners of the 2022 Golden Hip Award.

We look forward to seeing many of you at the Hip Fest and the FFN Global Congress that follows directly on from the Hip Fest.

For more information, please visit https://anzhfr.org/hipfest2022/ or contact Karen Lee, ANZHFR Project Officer via email info@anzhfr.org

AJA Latest Issue – Volume 41, Issue 2

Volume 41, Issue 2 of the Australian Journal on Ageing is now available. Read here. 

In other AJA news there is a new open access agreement for authors at Australian and New Zealand Institutions. Learn more here.

The AJA will be available online only from 2023. Further information will provided in due course.

Job Alert

Geriatrician
Full-time, permanant
Christchurch, New Zealand
Application: Via website
Closing date: 12/07/2022
Further information
Contact: Tracey Sutherland, Tracey.Sutherland@cdhb.health.nz, 021 538 325z
Listed: 29/06/2022

Consultant Physician in Geriatric Medicine
Full time
Whangārei Hospital, Northland District Health Board, New Zealand
Application: Via website
Closing date: 08/07/2022
Further information
Contact: Dr Juanita Pascual, Clinical Director via juanita.pascual@northlanddhb.org.nz or
Belinda Beehre, Service Manager via belinda.beehre@northlanddhb.org.nz
Listed: 23/06/2022

Work From Home Geriatrician Opportunity – Telehealth – $330ph or $1k per session
Telehealth – remote work opportunity
Australia Wide
Application: Via website
Closing date: Ongoing
Further information
Contact: Mel Houston, Senior Recruitment Partner mel@prescript.com.au 0414 716 132
Listed: 22/04/2022

Geriatrician Full-time or Part-time
Opportunities to consult face-to-face in the community (Sydney & other metro areas) or over telehealth to regional areas across Australia.
Sydney, NSW (multiple metropolitan catchments)
Application: Via email
Closing date: Ongoing
Further information
Overview of the organisation
Contact: via email: info@geriatriccareaustralia.com.au
Listed: 29/03/2022

Specialist Physician – Healthy Ageing and Rehabilitation
Full Time
Timaru, New Zealand
Application: Via website
Closing date: Open
Further information
Contact: Ross Yarrall, ryarrall@scdhb.health.nz
Listed: 15/03/2022