Blog, 30.03.12
First, sorry for the fairly long silence. I
have not blogged much recently because I eventually had to give in
to this virus and/or flu that’s been going around. My three
days in bed made me realise what it can be like if
you do have a chronic illness and associated immobility, but
it was also a good time to reflect.
While we now have the Health and Social Care
Bill as an Act, life just goes on at a pace. I attended a
meeting with other College Presidents and Commissioning Leads,
organised by Cathy McLean, who presented their vision for what the
newly commissioned health services might be like in the future, and
how the Medical Royal Colleges could play their active part in
this.
There is going to have to be an incredible
amount of work done in a very short period of time, with many
questions still left unanswered in a time of transition.
However, I really do think that as a College and as a members of
the Medical Academy of Royal Colleges, we have to seize each and
every opportunity. Even where we see adversity, we have to try and
take advantage from it. This is the line I am
taking.
I also had a very constructive meeting
with the Presidents. We are going to support the concept of
the Academy having a Clinical Commissioning Support and Advisory
Unit. Clearly there is a lot of business that each
College needs to do around commissioning at every level and at
every stage of the pathway for users and carers, but there are
common themes. We need to work to together across medicine and
this is what we are planning to do.
I had a really inspiring meeting with the
Chair of the Public Health Faculty, Lindsey Davies. We know
that public health is going to play a key part in the future
delivery of health and social care services. The new leaders
in public health will be embedded in Local Health and Wellbeing
Boards, working with local councils. I just hope that some
innovative Mental Health Trusts will decide that they actually need
a public health consultant in their midst, to work in the
Trust at least part-time. I think this will be a thoroughly
good idea and a good way of integrating Mental Health Trusts into
local community-based care and treatments.
I had an equally inspiring meeting with the
Chair of the Liaison Faculty, Paul Gill, and Prof Michael
Sharpe about their views on liaison psychiatry. Liaison Psychiatry
should not be about dealing with acute conditions in hospital,
but should be embedded into integrated care across
the patient’s pathway for both medically unexplained symptoms and
long-term conditions. Paul will be putting a
paper together with Michael which will be presented to
the next Council meeting. I am looking forward to enabling and
supporting this work.
I also attended a BMA dinner
where Sheila Hollins, our previous President, was there as the
successor to Sir Michael Marmot. It will be great to have somebody
with Sheila’s knowledge of mental health, learning disability, and
policy and parliamentary affairs, working with the BMA and
hopefully pushing the cause.. The BMA's Psychiatric Sub-committee
of Mental Health have also been very supportive of
our work.
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