Reflection on Australia’s Plastic Surgery community

Keith Bryant has been the CEO of the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons since November 2015, managing a small team that supports the 500 plastic and reconstructive surgeons working in Australia. Keith has worked in non-profit management and governance for more than 20 years. His previous career was in investment banking.

At points of change in our professional lives it is always useful to reflect. Not just on our personal journeys but on the journeys of the institutions that make up our working lives. As the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) passes its 50 th year, I consider myself fortunate to have been its CEO for the past six years.

To my mind, the most significant change in that six-year period has been the way the Society engages with the College. I recall a time when frustrations abounded in this relationship and opportunities for improvement seemed wildly naive.

Today I can report a significant change. We respect one another, we listen to one another, we have come to appreciate the power of collaborating with one another.

The secretariats of the specialty societies have played an important role in this change. Though they are often small offices with small staff numbers, professional management has taken root. Our governing bodies have seen the value in this professional management, recognising that it is different and yet complementary to the experience of surgeons.

I have been fortunate in having Councillors at ASPS who have been open to new ways of doing things. As you might expect, through various iterations and check-ins on our strategic plan we have consistently addressed the need to deliver better member services.

We have also recognised the important role the ASPS plays in maintaining and enhancing the identity of our specialty in the community. The Society has been honest enough to recognise that plastic surgeons, as a craft group, are easily misunderstood. The Society recognised that we had to address what we stood for, how we saw ourselves, and how we wanted to present ourselves to the communities that we worked in.

The foundation for this work has been articulating and implementing an ethical framework of principles and values that define and drive us both as a specialty organisation and as individual surgeons. Over the past five years we have carefully implemented this framework and been delighted with how our members have supported and engaged with it. Always reverting to the ethical ‘high ground’ has been a phrase that has resonated with the ASPS Council and our membership.

The work on identity and ethics has led to other important changes in the Society’s activities. We have reinvigorated our commitment to research, where Australian and New Zealand plastic surgery has historically had an outstanding international reputation. And we have reviewed how we approach public advocacy – not only on behalf of individual members but with a keen eye to what is in the best interests of the health system and how to best deliver patient care and safety.

The success of our advocacy efforts based on this mantra has surprised us. It has shown us how much the system wants to reach out to thoughtful agencies that start from that truly professional vision of working for a better health system.

There is still much to do. It is clear to us that the RACS family working as a surgical community can be much more effective in its advocacy for a better health system. The ASPS hopes to play its part in contributing and collaborating to achieve that. Most importantly, surgeons need to resist the temptation to fragment their efforts and identify only their differences. This makes us all poorer and less influential.

My experience with Australia’s Plastic Surgery community underlines how intelligent and committed surgeons are and what an important contribution their representative agencies (the specialty societies and RACS) can make to leveraging that considerable intelligence and hard work for the greater good.

Keith Bryant Outgoing CEO, Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons