A message from the President of RCSI

13 June 2024

Dear Fellows and Members,

For 240 years, RCSI has been at the forefront of improving surgical care for patients, safeguarding standards of practice and providing leadership in the field of surgery. It is an immense honour to be elected President of RCSI and I look forward to working with you to ensure that our College retains its role as the voice of surgery into the future.

It’s a pleasure to congratulate Professor Michael Kerin on his election as Vice President and to welcome our new Council members elected yesterday. I look forward to working with them over the next two years. On your behalf, I also wish to recognise outgoing Council members Professor Simon Cross, Ms Margaret O’Donnell, Professor Thomas Lynch and Professor Calvin Coffey for their service to our profession and to RCSI. RCSI has prevailed over the last 240 years due to the commitment and leadership of surgeons across the centuries. Working together, we can ensure its relevance for generations to come.

I also want to thank all of you who voted in last week’s council election. Your ongoing participation in our College is of fundamental importance and demonstrates the value that you place on RCSI as a lifelong professional community. Your votes ensure that you, our Fellows and Members, are represented by our Council, and that you have an active role in the formulation of the future direction of the College.

Our Fellowship and Membership community

Ours is among the most demanding of professions at a time when health services around the world are under unprecedented strain. At times such as these, the RCSI community is an important source of professional and collegiate support. I am pleased to report that we have recently completed a Fellows and Members ‘census’ of our community. The census gives us clear insights into where our Fellows and Members are practicing, their areas of specialty and their career stage. With 10,944 Fellows and Members working in 103 countries worldwide, RCSI strives to be an inclusive surgical college and I am committed to ensuring that the professional and collegiate supports that we provide reflects this. I look forward to sharing more details of the census results over the coming months and to using our census data to ensure that we are meeting the needs of our Fellows and Members.

As a first step, I am delighted to let you know that the new RCSI Fellows and Members Portal is now live. This means that Fellows and Members around the world can access online supports and resources, no matter where they live and work. We have already had almost 1,000 Fellows and Members sign up, with surgeons logging on from locations worldwide – from the USA to the UAE. If you have not already accessed it, I encourage you to do so and to explore the benefits that it provides, which includes surgical e-journals, recordings of webinars, access to online courses and much more. For Fellows enrolled in the RCSI professional competence scheme, over the next year you can expect greater integration of the RCSI Fellows and Members Portal with the PCS scheme. You can access the portal here and I encourage you to have a look at this short 'How To' video to learn more about how you can sign up.

Supporting your career pathway

The new Fellows and Members portal is just one component of our work to ensure that RCSI meets the needs of surgeons throughout their career, from their first day of surgical training until well after retirement from practice.

Over recent years, our Fellows and Members team and the Department of Surgical Affairs have reviewed the supports available from RCSI at different stages of a surgeon’s career. This has led to a series of positive changes ranging from the Affiliate Membership Programme for core surgical trainees and aspiring Members, to a deep-dive into the needs of surgeons who are not on training programmes, to increased supports for specialist registrars in partnership with the ISTG. And during the last term of Council, Past President Professor Viani and Council Member Professor Thomas Lynch led a comprehensive review of the needs and supports required by later career-stage surgeons.

Building on this work, a key focus of my term as President will be to enhance our offering for early-career surgeons, especially in the years just after Fellowship examinations and the early years of independent practice. While completing surgical training is a cause for celebration, undertaking an international Fellowship and starting a career as a consultant surgeon can be daunting. Our health service – and our College – need the energy, enthusiasm and innovation that younger colleagues bring and I look forward to sharing more about the planned structures, resources and supports in the coming months.

Leadership and advocacy

RCSI has a long tradition of leadership and advocacy for surgery, surgeons and surgical patients. Our experience, built on the committed work of our Fellows, gives us an important voice in maintaining standards. I am committed to continuing RCSI’s engagement with policymakers, regulators, health systems and patients. Of crucial importance to me are issues of access to surgery and patient safety – matters that are a priority for all surgeons, regardless of where we practice. Working with Council, the clinical programmes and our committees, I will continue to progress these issues as well as engaging with you to understand the opportunities and challenges facing our Fellows and Members in Ireland and internationally.

Belonging

I often think that, as surgeons, we are privileged to have a clear purpose to our work and a strong professional identity that derives from many years of training, education and practice. My experience of RCSI is that it also provides a sense of belonging through an inclusive and connected community. During my Presidency, I hope to play my part in strengthening the ties between us by providing occasions for people to connect with each other, encouraging our Fellows and Members to share their experiences and highlighting opportunities for individuals to get involved. I am committed to ensuring that our College thrives as the world around us changes. With your support, RCSI will be a place where surgeons at every stage of their career can find a professional home and make a difference.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge and thank Professor Laura Viani, immediate Past President, RCSI. Professor Viani assumed office in 2022 when the pandemic was receding and throughout her presidency showed great commitment to ensuring that our community was afforded opportunities to regroup and reconnect.

I hope to build upon the efforts of my predecessors by learning from the past while firmly looking to the future. I am grateful to the Fellows and Members of the College who have entrusted me with this honour. I am excited about the next two years and look forward to meeting with many of you in the weeks and months to come.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Deborah McNamara

RCSI President

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