Building Connections and Embracing Change: Community Health Team Day 2025
On a foggy Tuesday morning, nestled in the Heart of Portlaoise, the Technology and Transformation Community Health Team met for the first in-person team meeting of 2025. In the foyer of the Midlands Park Hotel, our colleagues gathered to catch-up over some teas and coffees before kick-starting our gathering. Mary Cooke, ICT Delivery Director for Community Health, welcomed the group and Ciara O’Shea, Project Manager, inducted us into the icebreaker.
Mary then returned to the microphone, and shared a brief presentation on HSE and Technology and Transformation topics, covering the Digital for Care initiatives and welcoming new staff amongst other items. Following on from Mary’s brief, Ciara then turned our focus back to the tables, where three circles, coloured red, green and orange were waiting. Ciara invited all staff to write something that we as a group should Stop, Start, and Continue, with the colours corresponding to the meanings. Each table then discussed all the suggestions and nominated their favourites which will feed into process improvements and enhancements across Community Health over the coming months.
It was then time for a team building challenge ‘Multi team building Drawers’ exercise, this required strategy, tactics, and leadership, with communication as a major key to success. The teams then presented their drawings to the group, and they were placed on the walls around the room, as our own temporary art exhibit. After breaking for lunch, the group reconvened to begin our afternoon activity, the Programme Stands, which appeared first at our team meeting last year. Each programme split into two groups. One presenting and the other networking with colleagues on other programmes to ask questions, share knowledge, and learn more about what we do. After thirty minutes, the teams swapped duties, and the timer began again. We were even lucky enough to have a special guest, Fran Thompson, Chief Information Officer, visiting the stands and asking questions.
As the day drew to an end, Mary Cooke closed out the meeting with a presentation and speech for Pat O’Driscoll, Primary Care Programme Manager, who will be retiring from his esteemed service in the HSE this February.
While the team will greatly feel his loss, we celebrate his phenomenal contributions across the service, whether it be in his local stomping grounds of Kerry, his birthplace of Cork, or across the nation in its entirety. Pat is greatly respected and revered for his work ethic, his leadership, his sense of humour, and his determination to help and uplift as many of his colleagues as he can. Fran Thompson also stepped forward to thank Pat, and echoed the team’s sentiments of how thrilled we are that Pat can now take a well-deserved rest, and how lucky we are to have worked alongside him.
Pat closed out and thanked his colleagues for the presentation, and noted just how far the organisation - and technology have come since the beginning of his career, reminiscing on a time when floppy disks actually were floppy, or when an entire hospital was run on a machine with only half a gigabyte of RAM. Pat shared that given how far the HSE has grown over his time in service, he anticipated great things ahead for the organisation at large as well as our Community Health Team, and wished every success to us in the future. With that, Pat sliced into the golfthemed cake, and the Community Health Staff Day came to an end.
