The ‘best-kept secret’ in medicine

The Irish Society for Rheumatology (ISR) Spring Meeting 2023 saw a range of extremely high-quality clinical case presentations on a range of topics important to rheumatology research and practice. After difficult deliberations, the judges decided on the winner as Dr Robert Harrington of St James’s Hospital in Dublin. 

Speaking with the Medical Independent (MI) at the conference, ISR President Prof Geraldine McCarthy expressed her pleasure in terms of the attendance and variety of topics covered. “The conference has been terrific,” she said. “The talks have been really excellent, very varied and very engaging. We always love coming together as a group anyway because I think we learn a lot from the talks and the questions, but we also learn a lot from each other because we all chat and discuss our issues, so it’s a really important meeting for our specialty.”

Prof McCarthy also commented on how the scope of topics reflects the way modern medicine is practised. “It does, but most of us are generalists as well so no matter what topic is being discussed, it’s of interest to us as a group.”

She concluded: “I think the members all know that rheumatology is the best-kept secret in medicine,” she told MI. “I would like for people to realise — such as trainees, because perhaps they are not being exposed to rheumatology — they may not realise how good the specialty is. There are lots of jobs coming along — when Covid came, most people did infectious diseases. I would like people to recognise rheumatology as a fantastic specialty, for which we have a lot of effective treatments.”