Welcome to the Website of the Society of Acute Medicine (UK)

It has been a very active year with a number of exciting changes to the Society for Acute Medicine.

The international meeting again attracted a record number of delegates with a broader range of countries represented. The feedback has been excellent with over 50% of delegates responding to the questionnaire. On the basis of this feedback the meeting should be considered an overwhelming success. In addition, we are grateful for the number of interesting suggestions in terms of programme layout and new topics to be covered at future meetings. These will be considered as we develop the programme for the international meeting in Birmingham on 1st – 2nd in October 2009.

We are forging links with a number of countries and Acute Medicine is being internationally recognised as important in the delivery of acute care. An indication of the growth of Acute Medicine is that we are now officially part of the European Federation for Internal Medicine (EFIM). On other fronts the Society is working with the Federation of Royal Colleges to establish Acute Medicine as a recognised specialty rather than a sub specialty and we are also working with the Royal College of Physicians to develop a National Early Warning Scoring System that we hope will be adopted by acute NHS hospitals.

As the Society grows we have established a permanent office at the Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh with administrative support from Christine Berwick. As part of this process we are updating our database for individual members and the contact names and addresses for acute medical units. All members are encouraged to contact Christine Berwick at c.berwick@rcpe.ac.uk or 0131 247 3634, if they have not already done so, to ensure that their details are up to date.

Finally, the Society cannot continue to grow and develop without your interest and we would like to thank all of you for your support over the last year and look forward to seeing you at the national meeting in Liverpool on 7th – 8th May 2009 and the international meeting in Birmingham next year.

Rhid Dowdle, President
Mike Jones, Immediate Past President
Professor Derek Bell, Academic representative

On behalf of the
Society for Acute Medicine