The NSW Chief Psychiatrist is convening a second NSW Mental Health Medical Workforce and Leadership Forum (Forum) in late September. I wasn’t able to attend the first one, held late last year, and this upcoming Forum is occurring during school holidays when I am away again.

The genesis of the Forum was in part a response by the Chief Psychiatrist to the findings of the 2014 and 2015 AMA (NSW), ASMOF (NSW) and NSW Branch joint surveys of public sector psychiatrists, which identified significant concerns about resourcing, workforce gaps and clinician-manager relations causing low job satisfactio...

Welcome to the summer super bumper edition of my column. I promise a sunnier read than you are used to from me, as I’d like to share some great advances we have made this year. We are finally beginning to ‘reap the harvest’ from our persistent efforts to engage in proactive and quality advocacy, networking and submissions to the NSW Mental Health Ministry.

A critical area of determined focus of the Branch over this past year has been to identify gaps undercutting quality and efficient clinical governance, leadership and workforce capacities within the mental health system. We know that there i...

I’m on the home stretch of my second (and last) term in this role. That leaves one more newsletter to go after this column! This is my time to begin some reflection about the most salient experience of my professional life: representing you, my NSW colleagues, to lead positive change these past four years.

There have been some difficult moments – because, to have any chance of actually seeing change occur in the current political climate (rather than engage in lots and lots of talking in meetings that go somewhere in the vague direction of their title but don’t somehow seem to reach any concre...

Let me indulge myself in this last column I write to you as Chair. Actually, some might say I’ve already indulged during these past four years of columns! Having said that, most of the feedback has been complimentary or at least indicating appreciation of being informed by my personal perspective, interest in the content and awareness that advocacy requires strategic tactics.

If you attended the NSW Branch General Meeting in April, you would have heard the NSW committee chairs present their reports and seen reflected in my Branch Committee report a glimmer of how diligently and intensely the B...