Paralympic gold medallist speaks at conference
A PARALYMPIC gold medallist thanked members of the medical profession for their work during his speech at this year’s Diversity and Excellence in Practice Conference.
Aaron Phipps was one of the wheelchair rugby squad that became the first GB Paralympic team to win gold medals, which it did at the Tokyo 2020 Games.
He had been invited to Guernsey in his new role as inspirational speaker to address about 150 attendees at the conference, but said he had a message for them too.
‘Today is about diversity, but I’m also going to thank them for putting me back together,’ he said.
Mr Phipps lost his legs and most of his fingers at the age of 15 due to blood poisoning caused by meningitis, but went on to not only attend three Paralympic Games but also, in 2016, to become the first disabled person to scale Mount Kilimanjaro unassisted, completing the climb crawling on his hands and knees after his wheelchair could not cope.
For his services to wheelchair rugby he was awarded the MBE in 2022.
The event featured eight talks and was arranged by Health & Social Care.
It was the second of its kind, but the first staged since the pandemic.
‘In the last five years Guernsey has changed,’ said director of care delivery and one of the organisers Elaine Burgess.
‘Guernsey is now multicultural.’
This conference gave people the chance to hear from colleagues in the UK as well as to network with each other.
‘We can have a lot of difficult conversations in our day-to-day work and if you know the other person it can make that flow better,’ she said.
As well as HSC staff there were representatives of the Medical Specialist Group and Carewatch at the meeting.
‘This also keeps them up to date on developments. All the speakers have said pretty much the same thing, too, about partnership working with the service users.’
This theme was a key element of the presentation by Dr Chris Turner, an NHS consultant in emergency medicine based in Coventry.
‘I was talking about the importance of hearing all the voices in the room if we want to make the best decisions, because nobody can see something from all angles.’
This included listening to patients and their relatives, too, she said.
‘It’s about hearing what people have to say and valuing it.’
