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At a national level, as well as being the official spokesman for his speciality, Fergal has long been primus inter pares, as it were, or the most prominent Irish emergency physician of his generation: in short, he has been President of the Irish Association for Emergency Medicine on no fewer than three periods between 2005 and 2022. Dr Hickey was a founding member of the working party for the national Emergency Medicine Programme and a Board Member of the International Federation for Emergency Medicine, and he has been the national director for the Advanced Trauma Life Support Programme in Ireland since 2006. In 2012, Fergal was awarded the Fellowship of the International Federation for Emergency Medicine in recognition of his contribution to international emergency medicine, and he received the Gautam Bodiwala Lifetime Achievement Award from the IFEM in 2023.

In Autumn 2022, Dr Hickey memorably told the Irish media that the coming Winter would be “hell on earth” for both patients and hospital staff, if official projections for hospital and ICU admissions were correct. Hospital emergency departments had become “warehouses for admitted patients”, he said, and to make matters worse, staff didn’t want to work in a broken system, and as a result, the health service was “haemorrhaging” healthcare professionals.

This podcast is genuinely essential listening for anyone hoping for a better emergency healthcare ecosystem in this country.

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In this episode, Garry explains his close connections with the Tyrone Gaelic Football team, why he came to be a medical student at Trinity College in Dublin, and how he overcame his natural shyness while working behind the bar at Mother Redcap in Camden Town (and acquired a lifelong - scientific - interest in alcohol!), and he pays tribute to mentors in Dublin and London. 

Prof Courtney also reflects on the successes of the Acute Medicine Programme, as well the difficulties facing healthcare in Ireland and the UK, and he describes how remarkably warm relations at St Luke’s Hospital, between hospital doctors, managers and general practitioners, help to ensure political support for developments in facilities and services at the hospital.

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Professor Niall O’Higgins, Professor of Surgery Emeritus at University College Dublin, he was Professor of Surgery at UCD and St Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin between 1977 and 2007, President of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland between 2004 and 2006, and Professor of Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Bahrain, between 2008 and 2011.

Since his ‘retirement’ from St Vincent’s, Professor O’Higgins has been the chairman of the University of Limerick Hospitals Group and the National Screening Advisory Committee, Co-Chair of the Interact-Europe Project, and a consultant to the National Cancer Screening Service. He has received many awards, including Honorary Fellowships of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the American College of Surgeons, and other Royal and National Colleges of Surgeons in Glasgow, Greece, Singapore, South Africa, and Bangladesh, along with the European Society of Surgical Oncology, the Academie Francaise de Chirurgie and the President’s Medal of the RCSEd.

He is - or has been - a visiting professor all over the globe, from the Europe to the USA, Australasia, and the Far East and has published over 300 articles and 20 book chapters, mainly on surgical oncology, thyroid disease and specialist training.

Among his many achievements in surgical practice, those he cites with particular pride are the introduction of the first breast cancer clinic in Ireland, the Breast Check programme, the Advanced Trauma Life Support or ATLS course, the liver transplant programme, various clinical guidelines by the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland including breast cancer management and trauma care, the European Board of Surgery Examination in Surgical Oncology, the Accreditation Council for Oncology in Europe and the Interact-Europe programme to develop interdisciplinary training for cancer specialists.

In this episode of Irish Medical Lives, Niall recalls a happy childhood and school days, he talks of the importance of working in a county hospital as well as a world-famous London teaching hospital, he outlines the development of Ireland’s first dedicated breast cancer service (and his appreciation for the pioneering specialist nurses associated with the initiative), he reflects on the problems with ‘managerialism’ and explains why professors should be particularly concerned with the welfare of both patients and medical students (the future carers).

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She continues to have a busy clinical practice at the Mater and Cappagh National Orthopaedic Hospitals in Dublin, and is involved in ongoing international collaborative research with colleagues all over the globe. In addition to her extraordinarily prolific output of publications, editorial, review, committee and mentoring work, Geraldine was President of the Irish Society for Rheumatology for four years until 2023, and has won many awards, including the RCPI Institute of Medicine Bryan Alton Medal. Most recently, Professor McCarthy received the designation of ‘ACR Master’ at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Scientific Meeting, the highest honour that the College (ACR) can bestow. Geraldine was one of only three people from Europe to receive the award at this year’s ceremony in San Diego and the only woman.  

In this podcast, Professor McCarthy pays tribute to several mentors, including her dad, Dr Donal McCarthy, former County Physician in Laois, Dr Daniel J McCarty, ‘a giant of rheumatology’ in Wisconsin, and her husband, Dr Dermot Kenny, who taught her ‘how to deal with men’! She also waxes lyrical about a particularly important comrade, Ms Anne Madigan, one of Ireland’s first research nurses, she offers crucial advice to young medical women about strategic career planning, and she recalls some chastening advice she once received about the high price that doctors’ children may unexpectedly pay for their parents’ ‘greedy jobs’. There’s also some hot-off-the-press guidance about the practical management of gout, ‘the most common form of inflammatory arthritis in adult men’.

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or HSE in Ireland. Originally a ‘public health trained’ general practitioner, he is also adjunct associate

professor at the School of Health Sciences in University College Dublin, and adjunct faculty at the

Institute of Leadership in the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland. His career path has been

genuinely remarkable, taking him from Nicaragua to Newcastle, Edinburgh and Dublin’s North Inner

City, by way of specialist training, multiple diplomas (including most recently in lifestyle medicine

and positive psychology), and an extraordinarily broad range of public health medicine, general

practice, journalism, advocacy and NCHD and other leadership roles.

In this podcast, Philip pays tribute to his parents, and his wife, Emma, and to the hugely ‘therapeutic

nature’ of West Cork, and he recounts how he - almost serendipitously - ‘wandered through a series of

jobs’ from leadership of Ireland’s NCHDs in the turbulent mid-1980’s to Deputy Chief Medical

Officer, all the while recognizing that communities of patients and professionals are ‘great assets’ and

that, while significant progress is constantly being achieved (for instance, in Irish cancer and

cardiovascular care), there will always be further advances to be made. Dr Crowley also touches on

many initiatives of historic and practical importance with which he has been closely involved, like the

Madden Report, the National Office of Clinical Audit, the national public health response to the

recent pandemic, the clinical services for the homeless and addicted at Merchants Quay Ireland, the

reconfiguration of the emergency service in Roscommon and the work of Irish Aid in Africa. And,

based on his own truly exceptional exercise regime and cultural calendar, Philip offers listeners one

(distinctly challenging but apparently effective) approach to staving off boredom, burnout and

premature ageing: “Let all keep fit!”

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In this podcast, Aisling describes the ostensibly short but surprisingly challenging journey from a Convent Grammar School in Newry to Trinity College in Dublin, she offers powerful advice to young women in medicine (to think ahead and talk about having a family, and what that means in practice), she explains why she is so grateful to the ‘amazing, beautiful, energetic and enigmatic’ woman who is her own primary mentor, she provides a succinct but reassuring review of the epidemiology and management of sexually transmitted disease in Ireland, and she describes the remarkable SH:24 home-testing scheme in Ireland, which has proven so useful in terms of screening and ‘telemedical care’, while simultaneously addressing that age-old obstacle to GUM care – patient embarrassment.

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Professor Hourihane graduated from Trinity College Dublin, in 1987, and he obtained his Doctorate in Medicine from the University of Southampton, in 1996, for his thesis entitled “Clinical and immunological features of peanut allergy”.

In this extended podcast, Jonathan recalls his somewhat faltering start in medicine, following which ‘hard work’ and ‘deep study’ led to a joint first place in Final Med; he talks of the need to recognise when a ‘door of opportunity’ opens, often unexpectedly, and he reflects on a career that took him from Dublin to London, Southampton to Cork, and then back to Dublin. He doesn’t shirk controversy but offers pragmatic views on issues like Sláintecare, the new consultant contract and generous salary, the obstacles to efficiency so often embedded in consultants’ workplaces, and the vexed topics of medical recruitment and retention. And, for specialist and general listener alike, he provides a handy review of the practical management of peanut allergy, anaphylaxis, hay fever and rhinitis, while highlighting the important distinction between food intolerance and allergy.

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Professor Garry Courtney, Consultant Physician at St Luke’s Hospital in Kilkenny and the HSE National Clinical Lead for Acute Medicine 

Dr Rob Hendry, Medical Director, Medical Protection Society

Ms Eleanor Faul, Consultant General and Colorectal Surgeon Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, in Drogheda 

Mr Greg Fulton, Consultant Vascular Surgeon, Cork University Hospital, and the Bon Secours Health System

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Professor Bobby Smyth, Consultant in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, trained in Ireland and the UK, before taking up his current post in the Adolescent Addiction Services in South Dublin. He is a prolific author of peer-reviewed scientific articles, most recently about ‘head shops’, new psychoactive substances, and cannabis legalisation, and his PhD was in strategies to reduce the harms arising from youth substance misuse. 

He is one of a small number of key medical figures in addiction medicine in Ireland and - in addition to being a Ministerial Appointment on the Oversight Committee of Ireland’s National Drug and Alcohol Strategy – he has had a wide range of other roles, e.g., with Alcohol Action Ireland, the General Population Survey Research Advisory Group for the HRB, the Editorial Board of the Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine, the Planet Youth Oversight Group for North Dublin, the Expert Group on Cannabis of the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland, and the Advisory Board of the International Academy on the Science and Impact of Cannabis

In this podcast, Bobby reflects on his ‘nomadic childhood’ and his training in child and adolescent psychiatry in Dublin and Merseyside, he recalls the devastating epidemic of Heroin addiction in the inner city in Dublin in the 1980s and 1990s, along with the associated Benzodiazepine misuse, early tentative use of Methadone, ‘revolving door detoxification’, and gradual evolution of drug addiction treatment facilities in the capital and beyond, he highlights some surprising lessons from his sabbatical in Queensland (where he worked on a pioneering telepsychiatry service), and describes the current complex profile of adolescent drug misuse, particularly in the South, West and East Dublin/Wicklow areas. 

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Since his appointment, Tony has been an outstanding driver of developments in palliative care in Ireland (90% of which is delivered in the community), and, among his many appointments, he has served as Chairperson of the National Advisory Committee on Palliative Care, the National Council for Specialist Palliative Care, the Irish Association for Palliative Care, the Irish Palliative Medicine Consultants’ Association and the Council of Europe Expert Committee on Palliative Care. 

Listeners to this interview - be they patients and their loved ones or professionals - cannot but be moved by the words of a profoundly humane and inspiring carer, teacher and advocate, who says of modern (often ambulatory) ‘hospice care’: “Nobody wants to receive a diagnosis of a life-threatening disease. We can’t always control what happens to us, but we can always control how we react. In the words of Victor Frankl, ‘between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom’. Hospice simply tries to create and hold that space, with love.” 

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marginalised, is one of contemporary Ireland’s most charismatic and practical humanitarians.

He has co-created several specialised primary care services for homeless people: e.g., Safetynet, the

umbrella organisation for primary care services provided in hostels, food halls and drop-in centres in

Dublin, Limerick and Cork. Safetynet also provides services to the Roma community; methadone

services to homeless people, and care for migrants. Austin also introduced a mobile outreach clinic

for rough sleepers.

Dr O’Carroll was a founding member of D-Doc, and he set up the North Dublin City GP Training

programme, the first such programme that specifically trains GPs to work in areas of deprivation and

with marginalised groups. He co-founded GMQ GP services for homeless people, and Curam, a social

enterprise that aims to establish new GP practices in areas of deprivation. His PhD in ethnographic

research into homelessness helped inform his TEDTalk on developing services for the homeless.

Austin’s remarkable work has not gone unnoticed: he was included in the book, Give Me Irish Heroes

in 2009; and has received numerous awards: Time & Tide Award for his work with migrants; the

Fiona Bradley Award for primary care to marginalised groups; the Healthcare Professional of the Year

Award 2015; Honorary Membership of the RCPI 2015; the Doolin medal in 2018 and the WONCA

(World Organization of Family Doctors) Europe 2020 5-Star Doctor Award for Excellence in

Healthcare.

In between work and family time, he cycles great distances, sometimes for charity, and he sails on the

Irish Paralympics Sailing Team.

In this inspiring podcast, Austin touches on his own Thalidomide-related disability and the ‘tough

love’ that prepared him for adulthood, the importance of distinguishing traditional faith-based and

‘medical’ models of disability from social and rights-based approaches, the devastating power of

‘internalised stigma’, the often-unfair press that GPs receive around prescribing benzodiazepines, the

suicidal ideation that can occur in professionals who are subject to complaints to the Medical Council,

the surprisingly impressive work being done in Ireland in the care of the homeless and marginalised,

and much more.

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Fergus Shanahan, emeritus professor of medicine at University College Cork and foundation director of APC Microbiome Ireland, ‘the largest human microbiome research centre in the world’, is a clinician-scientist who has published over 600 papers in the areas of inflammatory bowel disease, gut immunology and the microbiome, written or edited 10 books, and received many awards. A former president of the Irish Society of Gastroenterology, his book Fast Facts in Inflammatory Bowel Disease won the BMA Book Award for gastroenterology in 2006. In 2013, Science Foundation Ireland named him as its Researcher of the Year and, in 2016, the Royal Irish Academy honoured him with a gold medal for his research contributions. In 2020, Fergus published The Language of Illness, a critically-acclaimed book, described as ‘part-manifesto, part-memoir, and part-instruction manual’. In it he appeals for the use of ‘clearer, more holistic language by all those involved with, and affected by, illness’, which he argues - passionately - is an integral part of the human condition. In this episode of Irish Medical Lives, Fergus reflects on his happy childhood in Dublin, his halcyon days at the Mater Hospital and subsequent immunology and gastroenterology fellowships in Canada and California, the creation of the first germ-free lab in Cork and the revolution in ‘gut science’ in Ireland over the past few decades. He also provides fascinating insights into the human microbiome, the vital importance of dietary variety, and contemporary gastroenterology, and he concludes with his hopes for a better balance between technology and humanity in modern medicine.

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Professor Ellen O’Sullivan, a consultant anaesthesiologist at St James’s Hospital in Dublin, has a worldwide reputation in airway management and a substantial portfolio of cutting edge research. She was elected President of the Difficult Airway Society in November 2009 and, in 2016, she was appointed the Difficult Airway Society Professor of Anaesthesia and Airway Management. She has held many senior professional roles, membership and fellowships, at home and overseas, e.g., in the Society of Airway Management USA, European Airway Management Society, the Airway Special Interest Group, and the International Airway Management Society (IAMS). She was elected to the Council of the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland (AAGBI) in 2001 and became Vice-President. She received the John Snow Silver Medal for her contributions to the AAGBI, and the Dudley Buxton award from the Royal College of Anaesthetists for services to anaesthesia, and is the Past-President of the College of Anaesthesiologists of Ireland (CAI). 

In this wide-ranging conversation, Ellen reflects on her happy childhood in West Cork, her school days in Cork, as well as the juggling of numerous personal and professional commitments as she made her steady progress to the apex of anaesthesiology in the UK and Ireland, and she touches on her varied global initiatives in airway care and capnography, and her passionate dedication to the development of anaesthesiology in East Africa. 

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The topics covered include the recent challenges of COVID, the role of mentor in medicine, the cost of blockbuster drugs, the misuse of opioids, the recruitment of specialist nurses in oncology, patient hardship and public education, the threats to cancer screening and the future of oncology in Ireland.

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In this episode, Dr Chris Luke talks to Professor Mary Horgan, Professor of Medicine at University College Cork, Consultant in Infectious Disease Medicine at Cork University Hospital, and President of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.

In a wide-ranging conversation, the proud Kerrywoman discusses her own training in Ireland and America, thanks the mentor who pointed her towards a career in infectious disease medicine and reflects on the way the COVID-19 pandemic has been managed here to date; she also explains why she is so enthusiastic about the future of Irish medical education and expertise.

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