Plenary address to the combined National Trauma Research Institute and Australasian Trauma Society's Annual Scientific Meeting held in Melbourne, Australia on November 19, 2010

摘要

I've been asked to "comment on the burden of injury and meaningful outcomes". I'm not going to do that. One of the hazards of my job is catastrophising brain injury; weighing injury in "burden", and as more "burdensome" than other disabilities. Make no mistake: barely concealed beneath the disability advocacy sector's bonhomie, its cooperative spirit, all the polite talk of "synergies" and strategic partnering, is its competitive business. And it is a business that competes in "burden".I'd rather talk briefly about two things-hope and the imagination. Imagination, because in the seven years I've been involved in this sector, I've become convinced that anyone involved in the human services business - my business and, I think, your business -has to at least try and transplant themselves in imagination into the circumstances of their client, their customer, their patient or their patient's family.