Remarks by President McAleese at the 1st Irish Congress on Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Perinatal Med
Remarks by President McAleese at the First Irish Congress on Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Perinatal Medicine
Dia dhíbh a cairde, I am delighted to join you for this unique Congress which gathers for the first time in Ireland such a range of cognate disciplines and which in many ways heralds a new era of focussed collaboration in the fields of obstetrics, gynaecology and perinatal medicine. My thanks to Professor Fionnuala McAuliffe and Dr Michael O’Dowd for the invitation, to each of you for the welcome and may I in turn offer a warm welcome to all the delegates especially those who managed to perform epic feats of travelling heroism to get here and those who have overcome travel difficulties by their virtual presence, thanks to the realm of modern technology which is immune to volcanic ash.
In a memorable line in ‘Gone with the Wind’, Scarlett O’Hara proclaimed “Death and taxes and childbirth! There’s never any convenient time for any of them.” We could now add volcanic ash to the list but in truth whatever comes or goes in the world, whether nature and human nature are doing their worst, the cycle of life continues and all over the world mothers give birth in good circumstances and in bad. You dedicate your lives to making those circumstances as good as you can possibly make them so that mothers and babies are safe, healthy and well-cared for. My qualifications to address you are meagre – I have been a user of your services as three children including twins testifies, but really my mother or any of her sisters should be here because between them they have sixty children as my family took to heart the biblical command to “increase, multiply and fill the earth.” In fact my grandmother would be better qualified for though she had not a single qualification in the world, she was the unofficial midwife to whom locals turned in a remote part of rural Ireland when a child was due.
Your vocation has changed the experience of childbirth in many countries including here in Ireland, which is today one of the safest places in the world in which to be born and in which to give birth. It wasn’t always so for a century ago endemic poverty made pregnancy and childbirth a seriously dangerous enterprise for both mothers and babies. Those times have disappeared here but not yet among the world’s poor who depend on your profession’s insistence on pushing up the level of education and care so that the millennium goals on reduced maternal and infant mortality can be met and on time.
Today’s Conference is a valuable opportunity for you to share best practice, explore options for further research and ensure that the healthcare of women and their babies on this island is first class. It is very encouraging and a sign of the times that there is a strong all-island dimension to today’s conference; cross-border scientific, clinical and research collaboration in this field has been going on for a number of years but today is the first time that professionals from all the specialisms in the fields of obstetrics, gynaecology, continence care, fertility and endoscopy on both sides of the border have come together in one place.
Dublin is the proud host to the Rotunda, the oldest working maternity hospital in the world, now over 250 years old. Since it first opened as “The New Lying-In Hospital” many different Irelands have come and gone and with them an evolving culture of maternity care that has been re-imagined, re-shaped in every generation. In our time wider patient choice and greater partner participation are encouraged in ways that would have been unthinkable a few years ago and models of service are constantly updated, tweaked or added to as the experiences of a much greater audience are fed back into policy, planning and practice. People whose views, experience and insight in the past might have been left fallow on the sidelines are now drawn into a collaborative dialogue so that the services offered have greater authenticity and effectiveness underpinned as they are by the specialist professional knowledge and the empirical knowledge of the service users.
Your work implicates you deeply in what is for many people a very profound and emotional part of their lives. Whether it is giving birth to a wanted child, or an unplanned child, a sick child, a miscarried or still-born child, a child with a disability, or dealing with infertility problems, maternal illness or other complications, you are drawn into a very intense human drama where you are the source of strength and reassurance on which patients and families draw. Your research and intellectual curiosity have driven forward improvements in every sphere of care so that today very healthy statistics and very healthy mothers and babies with good outcomes are the norm and miracles a regular phenomenon thanks to the high standard of specialist pre and postnatal care and treatments.
The breadth of disciplines involved here today allows for much wider discussions around women’s reproductive health so that the resource base of knowledge around problems like continence or gynaecological cancers and other diseases can be put to much more efficient use. Increased awareness of the warning signs by professionals and by the public, especially women themselves, is an essential part of the earlier detection, diagnosis and treatment which are important to good outcomes. Your advocacy has been essential to innovations like the national screening programme for cervical cancer and the work of the National Cancer Control Programme, all of which are about ensuring insightful and timely symptom observation by patient and GP and speedy referral to specialists for assessment and treatment. Through these things you give the gift of longer life to many women and the benefits of that in homes and in hearts is something no statistical analysis can measure.
Your work also has its days of defeat, when with the best will, care and treatment in the world both dying and death have to be faced. Whatever your own turmoil as a human being affected by such tragic things, or indeed whatever the personal burdens of care you carry, as a health-care practitioner you are looked to, and looked up to as a problem-solver, a person with the resolve and wisdom to help patients and their families through a tough part of their life’s journey. You cannot go the journey for them but in choosing this field as your profession you choose to go the journey with them. And good, trustworthy company on that journey matters a lot. You may have a hundred or a thousand patients but for each individual patient you are their source of strength and hope. At a time when so many once respected and trusted institutions have had to admit that they failed those they were supposed to serve, the ethical foundations of individuals, institutions and professions is now subject to a searing and cynical scrutiny and accountability as never before.
Health care services have not been exempt and while health care professionals still enjoy high levels of public respect, trust and confidence, we have seen how easily damaged these things are and how utterly essential it is that every link in the chain exerts a personal responsibility for protecting the ethical foundations and values of his or her area of health care provision. This Conference provides a good opportunity to discuss these social, ethical and, dare I say, political (with a small p) issues with peers and colleagues and to reinforce the shared determination to pursue and embed a culture of uncompromising best practice.
You would not be here if you wanted anything less. The quality and extensive agenda of your Conference is testimony to your seriousness of purpose as men and women whose lives have been volunteered in the service of the very cornerstone of humanity itself. I thank you above all for choosing this great and noble vocation. I congratulate you on its many accomplishments and manifest successes and I wish you an engaging, provocative and memorable Congress. Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.