The 44th Millin Lecture was held at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland on Friday, 4 February as part of the 2022 Millin Meeting.

The meeting was the first live event to be held in RCSI since the campus closed in March 2020.

The keynote Millin Lecture was delivered by Professor Joseph Butler. A graduate of the National Surgical Training Programme in Trauma & Orthopaedic Surgery at RCSI, Professor Butler is a consultant spine surgeon at the National Spinal Injuries Unit, Mater Misericordiae University Hospital and Mater Private Hospital. He is an active clinical and laboratory researcher, with over 130 publications and 160 presentations at national and international scientific meetings, and has been awarded over €4 million in research funding.

His lecture on ‘The Evolution of Spine Surgery: A Paradigm Shift to Precision Medicine’ provided an insightful overview of recent advances in precision surgery.

The Millin Meeting programme also included a session from the Faculty of Surgical Trainers’ Programme, looking at the successes and challenges of the new intercollegiate curriculum in surgery and how training committees and training programme directors can best be supported.

Professor Mike Griffin, President of RCS Edinburgh, addressed a symposium exploring the current status of colleagues in ‘non-training scheme’ surgical positions within the health service.

A separate symposium provided perspectives for a career in global surgery and included a presentation by Mr Mike McKirdy, President of RCPS Glasgow.

The Gerald O’Sullivan medal was awarded in an afternoon ceremony. The medal has been awarded every year since 2012 to the Fellow who graduates top of the class at the annual COSECSA (College of Surgeons of East, Central and Southern Africa) exams. It is named in honour of the former President of RCSI, Professor Gerald (Gerry) O'Sullivan. Professor O’Sullivan was instrumental in setting up RCSI’s partnership with COSECSA in 2007, which aims to help train and retain surgeons in sub-Saharan Africa, and make better surgery accessible to more patients.

The medal was awarded to Dr Fridah Bosire, a general surgeon in Nairobi and COSECSA graduate/fellow with affiliation to the Pan African Academy of Christian Surgeons.

Rounding off the programme, the Irish Surgical Training Group (ISTG) Meeting took place on Saturday, 5 February. ISTG is an independent entity that represents trainees from all subspecialties and levels of surgical training.

The meeting included the Bosco O’Mahony Lecture on ‘Finding your Tribe’, delivered by Professor Deborah McNamara, Consultant General & Colorectal Surgeon at Beaumont Hospital and Clinical Professor in Surgery at RCSI. Other sessions covered the PROGRESS Women in Surgery Fellowship and the potential impact of Slaintecare.

Recordings of the Millin Meeting sessions will be available on the RCSI YouTube channel in the coming days.