The 2024 Sligo Balint Symposium was a huge success!
Watch this space for details of the 2025 symposium which will take placeon 16th & 17th of May 2025, in Sligo.
The bi-annual Sligo Balint Symposium allows you to actively process and deliver relationship-centred care through a deeper understanding of how you are affected by the emotional content of caring for patients. If you are a doctor or working in a hospital or mental health setting, this event is for you.
The Sligo Balint Symposium provides an opportunity for participants to train in and experience the method. Participants are assigned to their own Balint group for the period of the symposium. To date, this Symposium has attracted participants from across Ireland and over seas. It is run on alternate years with the Belfast Balint symposium.
Details of the 2025 symposium will be available here soon.
Your Hosts
Patsy Brady
Patsy has been an Assistant Programme Director with the Sligo GP training Scheme since 2005 and was chair of the National Accreditation Subcommittee GP training Irish College of General Practitioners. He is also a Member of the Health Committee of the Irish Medical Council.
He discovered Balint as a method of reflective practice for doctors in his training as a psychotherapist. He is an accredited Balint leader with the UK Balint Society and facilitates a Balint Leaders supervision group operating nationally.
Patsy recognised that doctors in training needed support and introduced Balint to the Sligo GP training scheme in 2006. He also established a Balint group in the community for GP’s which was quickly oversubscribed. Now there are three active Balint groups in the Sligo area and a significant number of mixed specialty and consultant-only groups operating at a national level.
Dr. Trish Noonan
Trish is GP and partner in a busy group practice in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim.
She graduated from UCC in 1991 and from the Sligo GPTS in 1999. She has a Masters in Family Medicine from TCD and became a trainer with Sligo GPTS in 2015.
A love of Balint was fostered by attendance at the Sligo Balint Symposium in 2013. Since that first experience, Trish has gone on to co-lead a GP Balint group in Sligo since 2015 and became an accredited BALINT leader with the British Balint Society in 2018.
Trish achieved a Diploma in Group Analysis from St Vincent’s Hospital School of Psychotherapy in 2020.
She is currently involved with BIGO ( Balint Group International Online) which is a pilot multinational group of accredited Balint leaders who meet monthly to explore Balint and Balint leadership in our current pandemic world!
Trish believes Balint has been enormously helpful in her medical career to explore the complexities of the doctor-patient relationship in a safe and containing environment.
