Wessex is a fantastic place to train to become a geriatrician, offering opportunity to experience every aspect of geriatrics whilst living in a beautiful part of the country. With a central base in the region it is possible to commute to every hospital on the training scheme getting the benefits of working in different sized hospitals and also community placements.
There is a robust and thriving academic training programme with opportunities for all trainees to become involved in research or education. Wessex Post Graduate Medical Education offers a clear management and leadership programme and has a Professional Support and Wellbeing Unit (PSW) which ensures great pastoral care.
Our aim is to produce doctors who are passionate about geriatrics and the future developments of this specialty, with the majority of our trainees securing consultant jobs in Wessex post-CCT.
Our sub-specialties include:
- Community geriatrics
- Stroke
- Orthogeriatrics
- Surgical geriatrics
- Falls and Syncope
- Parkinsons disease
- Continence
- Palliative care
- Older Persons mental health
Academic Geriatric Medicine at the University of Southampton is led by Professor Helen Roberts. The department also actively participates in national multicentre studies and through our close collaboration with the University Hospital Southampton, have acted as study sites for a wide range of research projects for example delirium in COVID-19 patients, polypharmacy and anti-cholinergic burden in older adults, and assessment of frailty in hospitalised older people.
Current research projects include :
- Identification and assessment of frailty in clinical practice for older people
- Evaluation of the use of trained volunteers to improve routine care of older people in hospital
- Sarcopenia and nutrition in different healthcare settings
- Chronic degenerative diseases in older people particularly movement disorders and dementia
The group has a number of innovative projects relating to different stages of the NIHR research pathway. The findings of discovery projects based within the Southampton Biomedical Research Centre are now being translated into practice and evaluated through the Wessex Applied Research Collaboration.
The group additionally includes an honorary associate professor, an NIHR advanced clinical fellow, a lecturer, 2 post-doctoral research fellows, a doctoral fellow, and a research administrator, and has good support from methodologists (statistics, modelling, qualitative and economic analysis). We have established collaborations with local, national and international researchers with expertise in epidemiology, gerontology, nutrition, basic science and social science. Professor Helen Roberts is the national lead for the NIHR Applied Research Collaborations priority area research programme in Healthy Ageing Dementia and Frailty.