Dr Rosalind O'Shaughnessy

Talks & workshops

Rosalind speaks on medical ethics and the movies, myths and mesmerising in health, xenophobia, migration and health, honouring stories of illness, as well as on the current NHS crisis in the emergency services. Each session can be delivered as a conference keynote, a seminar, or a half-day workshop, and none is fixed.

01

Medicine at the Movies

What screen drama gets right and wrong about medicine, and why the gap matters clinically. Drawn from a decade inside the writers' room at Casualty: how storylines get built, where medical accuracy is traded for narrative truth, and what that trade teaches us about patients who arrive already knowing what illness is supposed to look like.

Participants will be able to

  1. Describe how popular drama shapes patient and family expectations of emergency care, including of resuscitation outcomes
  2. Identify where dramatic convention and clinical reality diverge, and anticipate the consultations where that causes difficulty
  3. Use screen material as a teaching tool for ethics and communication with their own trainees
02

Honouring Stories of Illness

Narrative medicine as a working practice rather than a philosophy. What changes in a clinician's attention when they write, and what it does for the person whose story is being told. Includes the design and results of the Emergency Department creative writing group Rosalind established at Chelsea & Westminster.

Participants will be able to

  1. Explain what narrative competence adds to history-taking and to the clinical record
  2. Run a short reflective writing exercise with a clinical team
  3. Set out a practical case for narrative practice as a staff wellbeing intervention, with reference to measured outcomes
03

Virtue, Vision & Ethics

Practical ethics for decisions made at speed. Drawing on Iris Murdoch's moral philosophy and the argument that attention is itself an ethical act, this session asks what moral seriousness looks like when there is no time to deliberate — and why the ethics taught in medical school so rarely survives a Friday night in resus.

Participants will be able to

  1. Distinguish deliberative ethical reasoning from the perceptual judgement acute practice demands
  2. Recognise how attention and description shape which options appear available in a difficult case
  3. Apply the framework to a real decision from their own practice
04

Madness, Myth & Medicine

The persistent stories medicine tells about the mind, where they came from, and how they still shape the reception of patients in acute settings. Covers mesmerism and its descendants, the language of hysteria, and the myths that continue to attach to mental health presentations in the emergency department.

Participants will be able to

  1. Trace the historical origins of assumptions still met in acute mental health presentations
  2. Identify where inherited language shapes clinical judgement and documentation
  3. Reflect on their department's culture around frequent attenders and unexplained symptoms
05

Emergency Medicine in Crisis

The state of NHS emergency care from inside it, and the moral cost of practising well in a system that makes it difficult. Covers corridor care, moral injury, and what actually retains staff — delivered without either institutional optimism or despair.

Participants will be able to

  1. Describe the relationship between system pressure and moral injury in acute staff
  2. Identify retention factors that are within a department's own control
  3. Frame the crisis for a lay or policy audience without overclaiming

Not quite what you need?

These are the sessions Rosalind is asked for most often, rather than a fixed menu. If a programme has a theme these do not cover, she is glad to propose a session for it — please describe the day and who will be in the room.

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Speaker pack

A one-page summary with biographies, session abstracts and booking details, for forwarding to a programme committee.

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The writing group: what was measured

The Emergency Department creative writing group at Chelsea & Westminster runs as a regular facilitated session for clinical staff. Over 90% of participants reported a benefit to their wellbeing.

SET ME — Rosalind: this needs a sentence describing how that was collected, how many people, and over what period, so the figure can be checked. GMC guidance on advertising requires published claims to be factual and verifiable. If the data was informal, say so plainly and drop the percentage.

Recent speaking

Medical Humanities Study DayRoyal College of Emergency Medicine2026

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Enquiries

For a talk, workshop or study-day session. Rosalind is glad to shape a session to a programme's theme.

Get in touch