BGS announces new Digital Media Editor and Deputy Digital Media Editor

24 April 2020

The BGS wishes to introduce and congratulate the successful candidates for the Digital Media Editor and Deputy Digital Media Editor positions. They are commencing their new roles immediately, working alongside Fran Kirkham who will retain her current post.

BGS Digital Media Editor - Charlotte Squires

Charlotte Squires

Charlotte is a Specialist Registrar based in Edinburgh. While she loves all things geriatric medicine related, she is particularly interested in cognitive disorders, anticipatory planning, and simulation training. She first became interested in the role of social media in medical education during a period off work due to illness, as she quickly realised it was a fantastic way to keep up to speed with new developments and to engage with the wider healthcare community. This experience also made her consider how we can better involve patients in discussions across all areas of healthcare.

Charlotte believes that geriatric medicine has always been a specialty that seeks to connect like-minded people from a range of professions and values their input equally. In addition to loving this aspect clinically, she also feels there is a huge potential via social media to share ideas, conundrums and solutions, and to link healthcare professionals with patients, carers and families, and other stakeholders for open discussion like never before. She tweets @charsquires

Speaking of her appointment, Charlotte commented: “I am delighted to have been appointed as the new Digital Media Editor and I am so excited to see how we can collaborate, connect, and learn along the way. In addition to editorial duties and tweeting ‘all things geriatrics’ around the clock, I’m looking forward to setting up online journal and book clubs that are accessible not only to our members, but also to the wider community that we seek to support.”

BGS Deputy Digital Media Editor - Pippa Collins

Pippa Collins

Pippa is an Advanced Clinical Practitioner (Physiotherapist) based in Bournemouth. Her clinical career has been in acute care, the community and recently in care homes, giving her a broad perspective on the medical and social issues that impact on older people. She recently completed her Alzheimer’s Society-funded Clinical Doctoral Research Fellowship; she has submitted her PhD thesis ‘Stories of (im)mobility: people with dementia on an acute medical unit’, and is awaiting her viva.

Pippa has recently worked on an Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) project which introduced the Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment process into an acute hospital and also developed the role of Advanced Clinical Practitioner in Frailty. She was also part of the Wessex AHSN team that developed the Acute Frailty Audit. She is a peer reviewer for the International Journal of Older People Nursing and is an active member of the Ageing and Dementia Research Group at the University of Southampton. She tweets @pippathephysio

Speaking of her appointment, Pippa commented: “I was delighted to hear that I had been appointed as Deputy Digital Media Editor and will aim to bring my combined clinical and academic expertise to this role. I am passionate about utilising digital media in the promotion of education and research in order to reach wider audiences and promote interest and discussion.”

The BGS would also like to thank outgoing Digital Media Editor James Fisher and outgoing Deputy Digital Media Editor Dan Thomas for their important contribution to improving the Society’s online presence and impact over the last two years.

Outgoing Digital Media Editor - James Fisher

James Fisher is a Consultant Geriatrician at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, where his clinical responsibilities include the Movement Disorders service for the North and Central Northumberland area. James took over the role of Digital Media Editor in March 2018, stepping up from his role as Deputy Digital Media Editor, a role to which he was appointed in 2016. Since 2018 James has acted as a chief ‘authoriser’ for digital content to go live on the BGS blog, Twitter accounts and other digital media streams. In addition to reading and editing BGS blogs prior to posting, he has had an active role in commissioning content that accurately reflects the multidisciplinary nature of the Society’s membership and highlights key areas of interest to the specialty.

In his role as Digital Media Editor, James guided the BGS Policy and Communications Committee on digital issues including optimising the worldwide impact of BGS conferences. Under his guidance the BGS Autumn Meeting 2019 generated a record- breaking 46.611 million global impressions on Twitter via the hashtag #BGSconf. An accomplished tweeter and writer in his own right, James has authored a number of highly popular BGS Blogs including “Constant bleeps, all of the time…”: Time to debunk the med reg ‘superhero’,  Why Geriatric Medicine? and My Patient With Parkinson’s Disease Can’t Swallow: Gulp….

Reflecting on his time as Digital Media Editor, James commented: “Being involved with the BGS’s work in digital media has been a really great experience and I’ve very much enjoyed my time in the role. I’d like to congratulate Charlotte Squires and Pippa Collins on their recent appointments. I wish them all the best in their roles, and I look forward to seeing the Society’s digital media content further evolve under their stewardship. Lastly, I wanted to say a massive thank you to a few people for their help and support in recent years – Marina Mello, Dan Thomas, Fran Kirkham and Katy Ladbrook – thank you all.”

Outgoing Deputy Digital Media Editor - Dan Thomas

Dan Thomas is a Consultant Geriatrician based in Liverpool. His main interests are frailty, polypharmacy and palliative care. Dan took over the role of Deputy Digital Media Editor in 2018 following the appointment of James Fisher as Digital Media Editor.

As Deputy Digital Media Editor, Dan supported the DME James Fisher and was a key facilitator of the Age and Ageing Journal’s Twitter Club #AAAJC. Under his stewardship the Journal’s Twitter Club discussed a number of papers including ‘Fact Box decision support tools reduce decisional conflict about antibiotics for pneumonia and artificial hydration in advanced dementia: a randomized controlled trail’, Antibiotic prophylaxis and clinical outcomes among older adults with recurrent UTI and Understanding the factors associated with patients with dementia achieving their preferred place of death: a retrospective cohort study in collaboration with the Hospice & Palliative Medicine Journal Club @hpmjc.

An active and popular presence on Twitter, Dan has been invaluable in facilitating online engagement and providing feedback in relation to the Society’s Twitter presence. He has also been instrumental in building a network of “BGS twitterati” and supporting social media engagement at BGS conferences.

In response to the appointments of the new Digital Media Editor and Deputy Digital Media Editor, Dan commented: “I would like to warmly welcome Charlotte and Pippa to the role of Digital Media Editors. They will be well supported by the fantastic BGS staff team, and I look forward to seeing them develop the new and exciting ideas they have for the Society’s digital media content.”