Honorary degree for Aran doctor and lifeboat medical officer

By currach, lifeboat and helicopter, Aran island doctor Marion Broderick has saved as many lives at sea as on land over the past 32 years.

The general practitioner's "solo" role as "first port in the storm" and advocate for her community was recognised yesterday by NUI Galway (NUIG), which conferred her with a masters degree in health science.

Dr Broderick, who has also served as medical officer to the RNLI lifeboat, epitomises the best definition of "optimal" general practice, Prof Andrew W Murphy said in his citation at the conferring yesterday.

That definition, articulated by world authority Barbara Starfield in the Lancet journal, involves providing "first contact, continuous, comprehensive and co-ordinated care" to people "undifferentiated by gender, disease or organ system", Prof Murphy said.

“In a world reduced to statements of 140 characters, the concept of simply being there over an extended period of time seems revolutionary,” Prof Murphy said.

“It can also appear that doctors are expected to know more and more, about less and less, making comprehensive care an unrealisable fairytale,” he said, while co-ordination is “generally overlooked and always underestimated”.

Dr Broderick was one beacon of “exceptional lustre” in the possible gloom, Prof Murphy said, recounting how she had realised there was “no escape route from the islands” when she established her practice at Kilronon on Inis Mór in 1981 with her new husband, Martin.

For 32 years, she had “provided over 90 per cent of patient health needs, with judicious use of referrals to the mainland”, and had been a “strong advocate for her community, often when it was not popular to do so”, he said.

Dr Broderick “could be called to a sick patient on Inis Meáin, travel by slow lifeboat to there, alight onto a currach and then land at an unsafe harbour”, he said.

“She and her sick patient would then be expected to do the same in reverse, often accompanying the patient all the way to the mainland hospital.”

Prof Murphy noted she was a founder member in the mid-1980s of the West Coast Search and Rescue Action Committee initiated by Donegal woman Joan McGinley, and “within a decade, fast lifeboats, enhanced harbour facilities and aerial transfer were an accepted part of island life”.

Dr Broderick was one of the first in Ireland to use tele-healthcare and "near patient" testing, he said, and she was "intrinsic" to the development on the island of Arás Ronán, a 12-bed nursing home.

Rural practice is universally recognised as being tough, and island practice even tougher, he said, notingthat she was unsure last week if she would have locum cover to travel in for the conferring.

“Her nationally recognised work with the RNLI Aran Lifeboat has literally saved lives,”he said.

Dr Broderick, a native of Bushypark, Galway and mother of two, graduated in medicine from University College, Galway (UCG), as it was then known.