Moorfields Association newsletters
The latest edition of the Moorfields Association's honorary president's newsletters is posted on this page. For previous issues (since 2010), please click on the links to the right.
Firstly let me apologise for this update being slightly late. My predecessor, Tim ffytche, usually put out a November newsletter but there have been so many potential changes to the way the Association is run that I thought I would wait until we had a bit more clarity before communicating with you.
One of our main issues is the way that the MA was funded out of the private patients levy. For a variety of reasons this has ceased and so, you will all have had an email from Melanie Hingoranie (chair of the Moorfields Consultants committee) requesting a monthly contribution from your NHS salary (voluntary) to enable the Association to be funded.
In addition, the nature of the annual Alumnus meeting is due to change next year (this years meeting in January will be along the lines of the previous ones but shorter) and will, hopefully attract an international audience – not least, it is hoped from amongst the hundreds of international Alumni around the world who have benefitted from training and experience at Moorfields Eye Hospital.
At a recent High Holborn reunion lunch a vote was taken to amalgamate the City Road and High Holborn reunions into an annual event. Partly this was because we will at some stage “run out” of people who trained solely at one site (I was one of the last residents to work at both sites and I am 62!) but also to make the Association more collaborative and integrated. At the next MA meeting in January we will be proposing that these reunion meetings include all staff, past and present to be more inclusive and to allow generational intermingling!
Like it or not, we will all become “the older generation” of consultants at some point and I like to believe that our experience and knowledge will be useful to all generations as will the upward movement of knowledge provide interest to in the opposite direction.
We will also be discussing our ability to engage with alumni and I have asked Angela Smith from the Friends of Moorfileds' office to come and give a presentation to the committee in January to look at ways we can collaborate with information systems and public relations delivery.
The Association has traditionally funded a number of educational grants over the years (over £30,000 over the last three years) and this, in my view, should continue as it provides all clinical staff access to monies for the advancement of our specialty.
The Association depends on contributions from consultants to continue ‘to promote educational and social activities for current and past clinical staff at Moorfields Eye Hospital’ which is our mission statement.
I hope that you will all think about supporting the MA so that it can continue to develop into the sort of society of which as a member of such a globally famous institution, we can all be justifiably proud.
Larry Benjamin
Hon President, Moorfields Association