A community of reflective practice in the west of Ireland
The Sligo Balint Symposium is a gathering of clinicians who believe that the relationships at the centre of healthcare deserve the same attention we give to its techniques.
We meet to think carefully, in trusted company, about the work of caring for patients — and about how that work shapes us in return.
We are based in Sligo, on the Atlantic coast, and we have been bringing healthcare professionals together here since 2006.
What is a Balint Group?
A Balint group is a facilitated meeting of clinicians who come together regularly to reflect on the doctor–patient relationship. Cases are brought without notes or solutions, and the group's task is not to fix but to understand: to consider what is happening between clinician and patient, what is being asked, and what is being felt on both sides.
The method was developed by Michael Balint, a British psychoanalyst, who recognised that the consultation itself — the relationship within which medicine is practised — is a legitimate and important object of study. His approach continues to be practised worldwide, supported in these islands by the UK Balint Society and internationally by the International Balint Federation.
Balint work is a tool for clinical insight and for personal sustainability. It offers a dependable structure for processing the difficulty that arises in ordinary clinical weeks, and a community of colleagues from across disciplines — general practice, hospital medicine, psychotherapy, psychiatry, psychology, nursing — who are committed to the same kind of attention. The by-product, often, is a quieter resilience: a steadier capacity to remain present in the work
Our Story
The Sligo Balint tradition began in 2006, when Patsy Brady introduced Balint groups to the Sligo GP training scheme. The community Balint group he established for GPs in Sligo was quickly oversubscribed, and the appetite among colleagues for this kind of reflective space grew. Patsy co-founded the Sligo Balint Symposium in 2008.
Today there are three active Balint groups in the Sligo area, alongside mixed-specialty and consultant-only groups operating nationally.
The annual symposium has grown into a fixture in the Irish reflective-practice calendar, attracting participants from across Ireland and from overseas.
In 2025, Balint work was formally recognised as External CPD by the Irish Medical Council, ICGP and ICP amongst others — a milestone in the wider acknowledgement of reflective practice as a structural part of professional development and clinical judgement.
We now hold two events each year: the Sligo Balint Symposium in May, and a one-day Autumn Workshop in September.
Your Hosts
Patsy Brady
Patsy Brady has been an Assistant Programme Director with the Sligo GP Training Scheme since 2005, and was chair of the National Accreditation Subcommittee for GP training at the Irish College of General Practitioners. He was a member of the Health Committee of the Irish Medical Council.
Patsy discovered Balint as a method of reflective practice for doctors during his training as a psychotherapist. He is an accredited Balint leader with the UK Balint Society and facilitates a Balint leaders' supervision group operating nationally. Recognising that doctors in training needed support, he introduced Balint to the Sligo GP training scheme in 2006 and went on to establish the first community Balint group for GPs in Sligo.
Patsy is a taskforce member of the International Balint Federation.
Dr. Trish Noonan
Affiliations and support
The Sligo Balint Symposium is affiliated with the UK Balint Society and the International Balint Federation. Our events have been made possible with the generous support of the Medical Protection Society.
Dr Trish Noonan is a GP and partner in a busy group practice in Carrick-on-Shannon, County Leitrim. She graduated from UCC in 1991 and from the Sligo GP Training Scheme in 1999, and holds a Masters in Family Medicine from Trinity College Dublin. She became a trainer with Sligo GPTS in 2015.
Trish's involvement with Balint began as a participant at the Sligo Balint Symposium in 2013. She has co-led a GP Balint group in Sligo since 2015, became an accredited Balint leader with the UK Balint Society in 2018, and completed a Diploma in Group Analysis at St Vincent's Hospital School of Psychotherapy in 2020. She is currently part of BIGO (Balint Group International Online), a pilot multinational group of accredited Balint leaders meeting monthly to explore Balint practice in a changed world.
For Trish, Balint has been enormously helpful in exploring the complexities of the doctor–patient relationship in a safe and containing environment — a description her colleagues and group members would readily echo.