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Full speech: President Dr Lorcan Martin delivers opening address at the Spring Conference 2024 on Diversity, Equality and Inclusion
- April 18, 2024
- Posted by: Ian Rice
- Category: Blog Conferences Events
“Equality and inclusion cannot just be a theme for a conference or lip service or a soundbite. They are fundamental principles which must permeate and dictate our practice, be it on a daily basis or through special events highlighting relevant issues.”
Dr Lorcan Martin delivered the opening address to the College conference, highlighting the continued struggles of burnout and resourcing in psychiatry while focusing on the continue successes of the College through training, professional competence, policy and media. Read the full text of the speech below, and explore the full upcoming programme for conference here.
Dia dhaoibh go léir agus fáilte chuig comhdháil an Choláiste Sicíatraí na hÉireann. Good morning everyone and welcome to Spring Conference 2024. Also, a big welcome to Mullingar and our first conference in this lovely hotel. At the outset, I would like to say thank you to Professor Mary Cannon, our Vice-President, and to the conference committee for putting together such a varied and interesting programme to educate and stimulate us over the next two days. We have some superb presenters and facilitators from home and abroad. I hope you will enjoy not only the academic sessions but also the opportunity to catch up with friends and colleagues.
Unfortunately, we, as a profession, continue to face many challenges. The uncertainty around forthcoming mental health legislation, the bewilderment around the Assisted Decision Making (Capacity) Act and the frustration associated with recruitment, retention and resources remain common themes. We continue to be asked to do more with less. The spectre of burnout has not faded away. I have raised these issues on many occasions, so I will not dwell on them today. However, be assured that the College, through its many activities and with the support of members, continues to work tirelessly to represent its members’ interests, the welfare of those for whom we care and in the training of future psychiatrists.
On the subject of training and as I have said many times, one of the core functions of our College is the training of specialist and skilled psychiatrists and it is a function taken seriously by the Post-Graduate Training Department under the expert and watchful eyes of our Dean, Prof. Aoibhinn Lynch, and Post-Graduate Training Manager, Kellie Myers. There is no substitute for proper structured training and the team ensure that our programme, already of an exceptionally high standard, continues to evolve. We now have 3 exam sittings per year to meet demand, the curriculum is undergoing a significant review and the end of last year saw the first, and I hope, annual Educational Supervisors’ conference – and this only scratches the surface. The recent NDTP task force report made a number of recommendations, and it is encouraging to see that our College already has many of them in place for some time, including publication of statistics, a grievance policy, transparency of eligibility criteria and regionalised training schemes. As an aside, we are always looking for more examiners, standard setters and people to provide new content – as you can see, I am not above shamelessly advertising!
Trainees, themselves, continue to take an ever-increasing role in College activities. The NCHD conference, which I have had the pleasure of attending, has gone from strength to strength and the Trainee Committee is involved throughout College activities. It is never too early to become involved and never think that your voice will not be heard just because you are at trainee level. The extraordinarily thorough examination of the Oireachtas Report regarding the proposed changes to the Mental Health Act by one BST trainee went on to form the basis of the College response to that horrendously unbalanced document. The new Special Interest Group in Diversity in Psychiatry arose from a suggestion by another BST during one of our roadshow sessions and you will meet her later. On a lighter note, our lovely welcome slide behind me today was suggested by one of our HST trainees.
Belated happy birthday, everyone! Earlier this year, the College celebrated its 15th birthday. We have come a long way in that time, starting out with a staff of five and now with a staff of nineteen. Membership has grown from 251 in 2009 to over 1400 today. To cope with the increasing demands of training, we now have Heads of Continuous Assessment, Courses and eLearning and Accreditation – and I would like to welcome Professor John Sheehan as our new Head of Accreditation. There has been a 30% increase in BST intake and ARPs, like exams, now take place 3 times a year. Exams successfully moved online during the Covid pandemic and have now moved back to in person. Through our EAP department, the College’s media profile has risen dramatically. We have contributed to multiple working groups, implementation groups and Oireachtas sub-committees. The College contribution played a major role in the development of the Public Health (Alcohol) Act and over a hundred hours of member and staff time have been spent on the Mental Health Act revisions, so far. We have developed our own guide to Professional Ethics for Psychiatrists and countless position papers and policies. We have done suites of podcasts and interviews, education from Spin FM to the chambers of our Government. The list is endless, and I say ‘we’ because this amazing work has not been done by invisible elves in Dublin 2. It has been done by our members giving of their time and expertise in addition to their busy working days, supported by tireless work from College staff. To all of you who have contributed so generously, I say a huge thank you.
Despite passing the baton, I suspect my heart will never truly leave the PCS department and I still sneak up to the top floor for a crafty coffee and catch-up. Be it in the basement or under the eaves, the department has been a hive of activity since inception, providing quality CPD activities, accrediting even more and supporting members in maintaining professional competence. In the last five years alone, 50,000 emails have been sent and five and a half thousand queries managed by phone. Possibly the most visible and successful initiative has been Hot Topics. In 2014, Dr. Jackie Benbow provided the spark that became this ongoing series. Since then, there have been 79 Hot Topics events and we have come a long way from the 58 people in a room in the Ashling Hotel in 2015 to the staggering 531 who attended online in April 2023. Of the 172 speakers, 60% were College members, themselves. Over 1200 psychiatrists have attended Hot Topics amounting to nearly 6000 attendances and this is just an example of how one member’s suggestion can grow and provide a service to so many.
Speaking of basements and eaves, we have also moved from a handful of offices in Corrigan House to a building of which we can be rightfully proud, the long-awaited refurbishment is now finished and your College headquarters is open for business. I would like to pay tribute to Miriam who has seen this arduous process through to its happy conclusion. By now, members will have received invitations to attend the formal re-opening by Minister of State Mary Butler next Tuesday evening. I hope we will see many of you there at the garden party to mark the event. Moving forward, don’t forget that the building is yours, so feel free to drop in for an informal chat and a cuppa with colleagues or book a room for a meeting. Unfortunately, I can’t vouch for the overnight amenities and the spa has yet to be installed. If anyone has not yet RSVP’d and would like to attend the opening, just leave your name with Jennie or any of the team at the registration desk.
Some of you may have noticed our new logo on recent communications or here today. This was done not only to modernise our image but also to make the logo more digitally versatile and accessible. It also makes it clear who and, more importantly, what we are. You will soon see a newly updated and more user-friendly website. I would like to congratulate the EAP department on their hard work on this project, which they have taken on in addition to their usual trojan work. On the subject of EAP, I would like to welcome Dr. Joanne Fegan as our new Director of External affairs & Communications and Dr. Udo Reulbach as our new Director of Clinical Policy & Strategy. They have both hit the ground running and I am certain they are names of which you will see much over the coming years. As ever, the EAP Department remains at your disposal, should your require assistance or support in advocating for your patients or services whether it is in print broadcast or social media or interacting with other stakeholders.
The theme of this conference is diversity, equality and inclusion. As some of you will know from last week’s video, we have members from over 50 counties in the College. This represents over a quarter of the world’s nations. Our members speak over 30 languages as their mother tongue and over a quarter of our members are not from this island. 40% of the recent intake of new trainees were from non-EU countries. There are some who would cast these remarkable figures in a negative light, seeing it yet again as proof that we depend on foreign graduates to run our health service. Indeed, there may be some merit to this argument and the College continues, as you know, to lobby and advocate in the areas of recruitment and retention. Today, we choose to see the positive. Call it a rainbow or a kaleidoscope, a melting pot or a tossed salad, a tapestry or whatever clumsy metaphor comes to mind – our College contains a richness of culture and ethnicity to be celebrated and from which we can draw strength and set an example. Of course, diversity does not just mean where you come from or what religion you are, nor does it mean your gender, sexual orientation, level of ability be it physical or mental or whether you are neurodivergent or neurotypical. But, as much as we are all different and unique, we are also all the same, deserving of respect, compassion and human rights. Equality and inclusion cannot just be a theme for a conference or lip service or a soundbite. They are fundamental principles which must permeate and dictate our practice, be it on a daily basis or through special events highlighting relevant issues. On today’s programme, you will see a parallel session on traveller mental health. In October, in partnership with Kerry Traveller Health Project, we will have a full-day seminar in Tralee, promoting mental health in the traveller community and hearing about specific issues facing members of that community. Previously, we have run Special Seminars on mental health in Asylum Seekers and mental health and diversity. Today, will see the launch of our new Diversity in Psychiatry Special Interest Group and I hope many of you will join and further embed a culture of equality and inclusion in our College. If anyone wants to join this group, again you can leave your name with the registration desk.
I am also extremely excited to welcome back to Ireland and to our conference Professor Dinesh Bhugra, CBE, who counts among his many achievements and positions the position of Professor Emeritus of Mental Health and Diversity at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. In addition to this morning’s plenary session, Dinesh has kindly offered to provide a parallel session this afternoon on medical leadership skills, something so important for all of us in maintaining our roles as leaders in teams, organisations and wider society.
While you may be thinking it’s time for me to vacate the podium and get on to the real business of the day, I couldn’t conclude without saying a massive thank you to Miriam, Jennie, Karen and the team for bringing all of this together. Events like this don’t just fall into place and they take months of hard work. In fact, the preparatory work for Spring 2025 has already begun. So I think we should express our appreciation.
Thank you and have a wonderful conference.