The Trinidad and To­ba­go Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion (T&TMA) has a new pres­i­dent, Dr San­di Arthur, who says she in­tends to fo­cus on men­tal well­ness in the work­place dur­ing her stew­ard­ship.

Speak­ing at the Pres­i­den­tial In­au­gu­ra­tion Cer­e­mo­ny at Cara Ho­tels in Clax­ton Bay on Sat­ur­day, she urged col­leagues to be mind­ful of their health and well­ness as they work to­geth­er this year.

“We of­ten joke about us be­ing the worst pa­tients … let us change that nar­ra­tive. As we con­tin­ue to serve oth­ers, let us al­so sup­port each oth­er, re­mind each oth­er, and lov­ing­ly chas­tise each oth­er to show up dai­ly for our­selves … One can on­ly be whole for oth­ers when one is whole.”

Arthur added, “Through­out this year, I would like to shine a spot­light on men­tal well­ness with an em­pha­sis on men­tal well­ness in the work­place. The work­place is where many spend most of their ac­tive, alert hours. And even when not work­ing, time is spent prepar­ing for work, think­ing about what has to be com­plet­ed at work, what one does not like at work, who one does not get along with at work and it goes on and on.”

Out­go­ing pres­i­dent Dr Si­mone Mc Fee de­scribed 2024 as a whirl­wind year lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. 

She said, “Lo­cal­ly, doc­tors dodged bul­lets at work, griev­ed the un­time­ly loss of col­leagues and con­tin­ued to pro­vide the best health care we could amid un­cer­tain times. For the Trinidad and To­ba­go Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion, it was a year of bridg­ing the gap be­tween main­tain­ing tra­di­tion and ex­plor­ing new fron­tiers as we Treat, Teach, Men­tor and Ad­vo­cate.”

She re­called that they ed­u­cat­ed doc­tors about ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) by ded­i­cat­ing an en­tire month’s worth of (Con­tin­u­ing Med­ical Ed­u­ca­tion) CME ac­tiv­i­ties to the role of Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence in med­i­cine. They al­so formed an IT sub-com­mit­tee chaired by Dr Kevin Ker­na­ham to eval­u­ate how well they had been us­ing tech­nol­o­gy. 

Mc Fee said 2024 saw doc­tors be­ing ed­u­cat­ed on child sex­u­al abuse and in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence and be­ing pro­vid­ed with the tools to iden­ti­fy and ad­vo­cate on be­half of vic­tims. She said they par­tic­i­pat­ed in the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day ral­ly and their so­cial me­dia pages were abuzz dur­ing the 16 days of ac­tivism against Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence. 

“The T&TMA now sits on the IGDS/BATT (In­sti­tute of Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies/Banker’s As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go) Break the Si­lence over­sight com­mit­tee with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from or­gan­i­sa­tions such as the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ School of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty.”

Adding that the tri­als and ac­com­plish­ments of 2024 have placed the as­so­ci­a­tion in a stronger po­si­tion, Mc Fee ex­pressed con­fi­dence that they would ac­com­plish even greater feats un­der Arthur’s lead­er­ship. 

The T&TMA al­so pre­sent­ed the scroll of ho­n­our to Pro­fes­sor Dil­lip Dan and Pro­fes­sor Su­ru­j­pal Teelucks­ingh for their ded­i­ca­tion to teach­ing and men­tor­ing.