Dr James Adams is the BGS’s recently appointed Frailty Lead. He is a Consultant Geriatrician at the Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust.
The role of Frailty Lead is new, for me and for the BGS, so I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself, explain what this role is, what I’ll be doing and what motivates me.
I’ve been a member of the BGS Clinical Quality (CQ) Committee for several years and have been pleased to contribute to many of the projects undertaken by that committee, including the recently produced CGA Hub. So much of what we work on in the CQ Committee, and across the BGS, has to do with frailty which is why I’m so excited to be taking on this new role to connect it all together. In my clinical life, I’m a Consultant Geriatrician in Surrey where I am currently Clinical Director for Integrated Frailty Services. In the last few years, I have developed an Acute Frailty Service including a Same Day Emergency Care facility, authored a system-wide frailty strategy, developed an integrated frailty crisis pathway across acute and community settings (UCR and H@H), transformed a community hospital into a co-located integrated frailty hub and created a Frailty Academy. I have been a passionate enthusiast for use of Quality Improvement, education, training, and workforce development as key enablers underpinning this work.
I am delighted and humbled to be joining an amazing BGS team driven by a shared purpose to deliver what we know works best for older people with frailty. I will be helping to join the dots between different facets of frailty-related content, educational resources and meetings, strategy, external representation, special interest groups (SIGs) and other committees, drawing on my own experience of writing a frailty strategy, creating integrated care pathways and developing a Frailty Academy. I’m looking forward to working with individuals and groups from across the BGS community to draw together the excellent work already going on to improving healthcare for older people living with frailty.
Both frailty and comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA) are the golden threads of our specialty, helping us form a common language and offering the BGS an opportunity to be the key national society central to shaping the future of the NHS. Recently the Government released its Ten Year Health Plan for England. This presents us with a very high-level road map to help deliver radical and much-needed change. It remains to be seen if we have the capability, capacity, and infrastructure to make this a reality. But our job is to ensure the key principles we have developed in recent years are upheld at every step. To make the BGS one big frailty family of multiprofessionals all with the same goals: to grow, adapt and be the “go to” for anyone who wants to build a health and care system around the needs of older people.
I have spent a large chunk of my professional career interpreting healthcare policy for the uninitiated, making it clear that the vast majority of any healthcare systems work is related to older people, many of whom will be living with frailty. My response to the Ten Year Plan is just the same. We are in a great position to offer the answers that many are seeking when it comes to actually implementing change. I am massively excited to be part of the biggest multidisciplinary team in the country in helping the BGS write the next chapter.
