BALANCING a daytime job as a lawyer with the roles and responsibilities that come with being the Western Trust Board’s chairman can’t have been an easy task over the last nine years.

But as he prepared to begin another term with the Trust this month, Gerry Guckian confessed it is his chairmanship role that keeps him awake at night!

Mr. Guckian had been due to retire from the post at the end of last month.

But when no suitable candidates were found to fill the position, for the second year running it fell to Mr. Guckian to reprise the role once more.

“It has always been difficult to balance two lives -- one as a full-time lawyer and the other as a part-time chair,” he concedes, “But people have often told me it’s the one you go to bed worry about at night and the one you wake up worrying about in the morning that is the real full-time job. For me, that would be the Trust!

“Yes in law, you are still working to deadlines, and there is a certain degree of pressure that comes with that job. But it is never really ever ‘life or death’.

“You don’t want to ever be doing things that could cost people’s lives. That’s where you really have to do your best and do the right thing and just trust that the judgements made will be the right ones.” As chairman of the Western Trust for nine years and five years in Altnagelvin before that, Mr. Guckian admits it will be hard to walk away from the work that quickly became his passion when he first began as a non-executive director.

“I quickly became aware of the issues and I was hooked,” he says, “I was always aware that the issues I was dealing with were so important to everybody. So you do become passionate about that and it gets very difficult to walk away from.

“You ask anyone: ‘what are the things most important to you?’. I would hope they would reply with their family and their health!

“For those two things the Western Trust will be there for you. So yes, what we do is really important to people.” One of his lasting memories of his career in health and social care to date is the challenge of merging three hospital sites under the new name of the Western Trust in 2007.

“On the one hand you’d had the Fermanagh campaign, fighting to have the new acute hospital in their area, and on the other side of the same coin there was Omagh, saying it should be with them.

“There was a division there that had to be mended.

“I remember too, how we visited each of the hospitals after the merge to get to know the ‘people and the place’ a bit better.

“I have to be honest, I didn’t know much about Enniskillen back then.

“But I remember meeting staff in the old Erne. I’m sure they thought: ‘who are they coming down here to tell us what to do?’.

“It did have that kind of a feel about it at the time.” He recalls too, being interviewed at that time about where his allegiances lay.

“I was asked if I had a Derry agenda and I said ‘Yes. But also an Enniskillen agenda and an Omagh one because there has to be someone to speak up for all of these places.’” According to Mr. Guckian, the true legacy of the Trust to date is the delivery of the South West Acute Hospital.

“People were suspicious that we might not even build the hospital!” he recalls.

“But we can all see now that we stood by that promise and it is a great testament to everyone involved.

“I strongly believe those involved have brought about what, I think, is structurally the most modern hospital in Europe at the moment.

“And one of my highlights must be opening that hospital with Her Majesty the Queen.” Asked whether it was the right time to deliver a multi-million hospital, given the current financial constrains on the Trust, Mr. Guckian said: “When you really go through it, consider it all, it is clear that it was needed and it was the right thing to do.

“We can’t avoid the fact that finances are even more tight than ever before.

“But I don’t believe it would be right in a health and social care organisation to completely divorce cost and finances from the needs of our population. And the needs of the population demanded a new hospital in the southern sector which provided at least some acute care.

“In my view it is now vitally important that we fully utilise that asset and make it cost effective. Some might say: ‘Two acute hospitals in the Western Trust? Surely that is less efficient than having just one?’.

“But if we were to take away South West Acute, then we couldn’t have that ‘golden hour’ of access to acute care and a portion of our population would be left behind -- that wouldn’t be fair -- we can’t allow that to happen.

“There are special circumstances for the South West -- because of the rurality of the area and the population of the South West deserve every bit as much care as the population of South East.” Describing the hospital as a ‘big asset’, Mr. Guckian said his colleagues in the Trust have been looking at ways to further utilise the facility, including developing more cross border work.

Paying tribute to the exemplary staff at South West Acute, the chairman says he believes the ‘family feel’ of the Erne still exists at the new site.

And what’s more, he says the new hospital is helping to attracting health care staff “of the highest calibre”.

“We already have the likes of Ronan O’Hare, Ray Nethercott and Professor Varma, supported by fantastic nurses like Diane McCaffrey and Jackie Teague.

“These people are dedicating their lives to the people of the South West.” And he makes a special mention of the hospital’s volunteers.

“When the Queen opened the hospital, I had the chance to sit down with her in what is now the canteen along with a group of volunteers including the late Blodwen Espley.

“She had given 45 years of voluntary work between the old Erne and the new hospital. The photo of her, myself and the Queen sits on my piano at home.” Reflecting on his own service within the Western Trust, Mr. Guckian believes the health and social care landscape here is practically unrecognisable to what it was nine years ago.

“We have the refurbishment at Altnagelvin, the radiotherapy centre there, the new South West Acute Hospital and the Local Enhanced Hospital in Omagh which is to be completed in 2017.

“All of those hospitals stand us in good stead for decades to come.

“The rest of Northern Ireland is looking at us in envy.

“As ‘leaders’ in the Trust Board it is a constant frustration when our politicians come to us with issues that their constituents are experiencing.

“We only have ‘x’ amount of millions to spend and let me assure you, we spend every penny.

“When that is done, there is no more money in the pot. We have to become more and more efficient, we have to prioritise.

“Of course, I understand an individual’s case is their priority, that’s the way it should be. But some times we have to exercise the wisdom of Solomon to decide what has the most clinical need.

“It is very difficult to make money stretch!” Mr. Guckian’s extended term of appointment is for up to a further 12 months until July 2016.

It carries a time commitment of three days per week and may involve commitment both inside and outside normal working hours.

The non-executive Chair of the Western Trust appointment attracts an annual remuneration of £29,716.

Announcing the extended term of appointment, the Department of Health said it was to “allow the full process of appointing a new non-executive Chair to the Western Trust Board to be completed”.