The President took the chair and welcomed everyone to the Zoom meeting. She introduced Dr Pearl Hettiaratchy OBE DL FRCPsych. and asked her to deliver the Foott Memorial Lecture for 2021, entitled 'Five Decades in Clinical Practice; Caring,Influencing Change and Keeping Going’.
Dr Hettiaratchy said that she was now in her 56th year of clinical practice. She was a Tamil by birth and attended medical school in Sri Lanka. She, and her husband, who is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, decided to come to Britain to train in psychiatry with a view to returning to Sri Lanka after exams. My journey, she said, started at St. James Hospital Portsmouth in June 1968 on a clinical attachment to test my spoken and written English by the then Wessex Regional Health Authority. These were difficult early days in a new country, adjusting to a whole new way of life, with limited or no resources – no security, no home, family or friends. However, they had each other, their degrees and their Faith. She completed both DPM and Membership exams within four years and was persuaded to stay in the UK and appointed a consultant psychiatrist in Portsmouth in 1975 in old age psychiatry - the first sari wearing consultant in the region. Her husband was appointed consultant in child and adolescent psychiatry in Basingstoke at the same time. She approached her consultant post with passion and enthusiasm, introducing novel and innovative approaches in the treatment of the elderly, improved access to services for them and she started a widespread programme of teaching and training of all staff. This saw the development of psychotherapeutic services to patients and carers, the UK’s first Travelling Day Hospital for the Elderly and The Wessex Region’s Day Release Course in Old Age Psychiatry. She was appointed Chairman of the Portsmouth Division of Psychiatry. In 1984 she was invited to be a consultant in Winchester which she saw was an opportunity to set up a community-based service with no institution to dismantle first. Her early months and years in Winchester were traumatic, having to cope with racism, overt and covert. She was the first female consultant appointed in Winchester in any specialty. She said she dealt with all these difficult issues sensitively and professionally. Throughout her career she combined clinical work with contributions to other health-related organisations. These included the Royal College of Psychiatrists, where she was on committees for Psychiatric Practice and Training in a British Multi-Ethnic Society, Executive Committee Section of Old Age Psychiatry, Nursing Committee, Unethical Psychiatric Practice, and worked with the DOH on mental health services to ethnic minorities. She also served on the GMC Professional Conduct Committee, the Review Body for Overseas Qualified Doctors, the Steering Group on Performance, the Race Equality Group and the Working Group on the Professional Conduct Committee. She was also invited to join the Mental Health Act Commission – later to become the CQC. She was a deputy Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire. Pearl decided to retire from her consultant post at the age of 60 in 2002 but continued with the other activities including adding the Brendon Care Trust, the Alzheimers Society, the Samaritans and an honorary consultantship at the St Cross Hospital for the Clergy. In 2019 she returned to Jaffna to assess and advise on the mental health provisions, services, training and funding needed there. In 2020, now 80, she continues with much of her work and was recently revalidated to continue as a practising psychiatrist. She finished her talk with her personal approach to life: try to achieve excellence, always give a personal touch to your dealings, always give of your best, own up to mistakes and always be professional. You have to believe in yourself.
The President thanked Dr Hettiaratchy for her most inspiring lecture. She said that she had a very happy time working under her as a junior doctor.
There being no other business the meeting was closed.