Topic

Liaison faculty conference in Birmingham

Arif Ahmed
Arif Ahmed • 13 May 2016

On Thursday 12th May 2016, Oliver Bashford and I attended the second day of this conference:

http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/traininpsychiatry/conferencestraining/conferences/liaisonconference2016.aspx

The title for the day was 'Integrated psychological medicine models in the UK'. We had the opportunity to listen to some experts in the field of liaison psychiatry (LP) and to showcase our poster on 'Sustainable outcomes in LP'. We also had a stand at the 'world cafe' section with support from Phil Davison who kindly made the journey from Oxford - He bought a couple of other sustainability posters (by Daniel Maughan and a joint one from Oliver and Mike Pearce) which we managed to put on display.

There were many people interested in sustainability, including the faculty chair, Dr Peter Aitken, and one psychiatry trainee from Cambridge who showed particular enthusiasm in the scholarship as a potential future special interest session.

It was evident from many of the models of care being discussed and the general impression from the day that LP is actually quite sustainable. There is a massive move towards community integration and the spread of the field into many specialties of medicine. Furthermore, some models appear to be looking at various aspects of prevention, including the possibility of using predictive tools to forecast admissions and entry into services.

It would be nice to see more emphasis on the social and environmental aspects of value in LP and perhaps brief consideration of carbon. Hopefully our work has raised some awareness of these issues.

Many thanks to everyone who took time to look at our poster and talk to us at the conference!

Comments (1)

Suhana Ahmed
Suhana Ahmed

Sounds like it went really well guys. I agree that liaison is in fact one of the most sustainable sub-specialties in psychiatry.

Really good to hear that people were interested.


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