REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE NATIONAL REHABILITATION HOSPITAL
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE NATIONAL REHABILITATION HOSPITAL, DUN LAOGHAIRE
Dia dhíbh go léir inniu. Tá an-athas orm bheith anseo libh ar an ócáid speisialta ‘s stairiúil seo. A very happy Golden Anniversary to all at National Rehabilitation Hospital and I thank Henry Murdoch, Chairman of the Board, for inviting me to this fiftieth anniversary celebration.
It would be wonderful if life was so perfect, so free from serious incapacitating illness and accidents that we had no need for a National Rehabilitation Hospital. But life is a lot less than perfect and because it is, there are many thousands of men, women and children who have good reason to be very grateful for the existence of this Hospital. For here you have helped them face into the realities of serious injury and to have faith in the possibilities offered by rehabilitation. Some patients from the Hospital’s earliest days have been able to join us for this celebration, each one a quiet testimony to the impact this Hospital had on their lives. There are current patients too, at various stages of treatment and of course there are those who have effectively a life-long association with the Hospital following discharge from their in-patient programme.
Every one of those treated here could tell us a story of life’s capriciousness and cruelty, of huge challenges faced, of days when they felt overwhelmed, days when they struggled to find courage and days when they felt the stirrings of hope, of acceptance, of renewed interest in life. This place does much more than help mend broken bodies. It has to accompany patients and their families very closely through the most testing of emotional tempests as they adapt to what may well be significant changes to their quality of life. The Hospital we celebrate today is not the building but the people – the teams of professional men and women who have worked here and the patients who have spent time here. Between them they have constructed a legacy of effort against the odds, of hope and realism in the face of adversity and fatalism. The intense nature of the work carried on here demands exceptional personal qualities of those who work here. In the teeth of awful life-altering situations, the Hospital has to be a place of practical positivity, where self-belief is rebuilt at the same time as broken bones and bodies. The commitment needed from every member of the Hospital’s hugely diverse team is considerable.
Hippocrates once said “Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity”. You have lovingly practiced the art of medicine here, looking always for ways to improve that art so that humanity would know more hope and less suffering. It is not the same place it was fifty years ago. The services, options and outcomes have been transformed thanks to enhanced professional education and training, thanks to research, thanks to the widening of the range of professional disciplines brought to bear on solving the problems the work of rehabilitation presents and those presented by the running of a rehabilitation hospital. The loyalty and dedication of staff was I know showcased at its best during the recent arctic spell when simple things like keeping the water and heat going, or keeping the driveways accessible were far from simple, when just getting into work was an epic journey. That team spirit is evident too in the band of volunteers who work to bring fun, friendship, company and craic into patients lives.
The Sisters of Mercy have had a very long association with this place beginning back in that fateful year of 1916 when it was a tuberculosis sanatorium. With the advice of Dr. Thomas Gregg, in 1961 the Sisters established this building as a National Rehabilitation Centre. Sr. Aileen McCarthy and Sr. Maura Hanly both here today have been involved with the Hospital since its earliest years and Dr. Thomas Gregg, the Hospital’s first Medical Director is also here – and still engaged as a member of the Board. They know better than anyone that the essential charism of compassionate care allied to the best possible treatment links the first and the fiftieth years in equal measure.
On behalf of all of the patients who have attended the National Rehabilitation Hospital over the last 50 years and their families, I thank the Board members, staff and volunteers who have been the hands and hearts of this important work of care since it first opened its doors. To Derek Greene and all the members of the team which is leading the Hospital into its second half century, I wish you inspiration from the past fifty years and enduring energy for the fifty to come. To the patients whose personal journeys are often a catalogue of super-human courage in the face of adversity, I wish you better days today and tomorrow thanks to your partnership with the National Rehabilitation Hospital. The last time I was here, a number of former patients, injured in road crashes were telling their cautionary stories very publicly as part of the Christmas Road Safety campaign. I hope those stories will impact heavily on all road users so that this Hospital will see a real reduction in patients presenting with appalling and very avoidable injuries.
Congratulations on this anniversary and I wish you every continued success in all that you do in the cause of others for the next fifty years and beyond. Comhghairdeas libh arís inniu ‘s go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.