All issues are communication

When Dr Paula Gilvarry was elected President of the Irish Medical Organisation in April this year, she became its honorary head at a time when a stark measure of job dissatisfaction among doctors appeared: a survey published in an IMO benchmark paper, which stated that 31% of doctors would not choose medicine if they were to start their career again. This survey looked at the opinions of NCHDs, consultants, GPs and public health doctors, for whom the IMO is the only national representative medical organisation linking all branches of the profession in Ireland. As well as being President of the IMO, Dr Gilvarry is also the senior area health officer for the Sligo-Leitrim area, and the mother of two teenagers. She comes from a medical family (her father was the Resident Medical Intendant and Chief Psychiatric Consultant of St Mary’s Psychiatric Hospital, Castlebar), and despite her own success in medicine, she remains down to earth, practical and approachable.