Tá Brón Orm - Sorrow Is On Me

On the 3rd of November, I was fortunate enough to be supported by OCH to attend the PCARN Biannual Hui in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington (held the day before the Hospice NZ Conference at Wellington Hospital – quite the maze to locate the lecture theatre!)

The Palliative Care Aotearoa Research Network (PCARN) is a national group of multidisciplinary clinicians, researchers and academics. Their vision is to promote a culture of clinical research and enquiry across palliative care services in Aotearoa and to support new and existing clinical research in palliative care.

Speakers and topics for the hui included:

• Richard McNeill - A framework for observational studies in palliative care

• Lana Ferguson – Integrating clinical research into practice

• Daniel Begley – Delivering sustainable healthcare improvement

• Sinéad Donnelly – The story of a research journey

• Amanda Landers – Research priorities

The day was very inspirational, particularly for me Sinéad’s talk about her own journey from doing research as a young undergraduate, to where she is today working as a palliative and general medicine physician in Wellington and a professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Otago, Wellington.

She spoke of Tá brón orm (pronounced toe-brone-urm) which is Irish Celtic. In that language, one does not say, I am sad, but that, Sorrow is on me. The implication is that you are not fully identified with the emotion but that it is weighing on you and that with time all things change. Sometimes up, sometimes down, but that life is always in transition.

For those who are interested, PCARN's regional liaisons are your local point of contact. If you’re interested in research, your liaison is a great person to connect you with other researchers locally and nationally. For us, this is Helen Harrex.

For further information, check out their website: https://www.pcarnnz.org/