Professor Dorothy Breen, founder of forDoctors.ie, a unique Irish coaching and mentoring service provided by doctors for doctors, is a Senior Lecturer in the Graduate School of Healthcare Management at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, where she specialises in leadership, quality improvement and patient safety. Aside from this work, she has been a consultant intensivist and anaesthesiologist at Cork University Hospital and the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney for 16 years, during which time she has helped to introduce major national clinical and quality improvement initiatives like ‘safety huddles’, the Irish National Early Warning System, Schwartz Rounds, and After-Action Reviews, and the first Advanced Nurse Practitioner for the Deteriorating Patient. Dorothy also has a particular interest in simulation in education, and as well as being Director of Education at the celebrated ASSERT Simulation Centre in University College Cork.

In this podcast, Professor Breen brings immense warmth and wisdom to her analysis of the biggest challenges facing the Irish health service. She recalls her early years in Birmingham and Wexford, her visionary secondary school headmistress, and her training in Trinity College affiliated hospitals like the Meath and Adelaide, as well as Clonmel (where she benefited not just from a doctors’ res ‘with (possibly) the best views in Ireland’ but also from an a particularly intense clinical workload and a heroic consultant boss). She reflects on her training and consultant post in intensive care medicine in Sydney and the at-times-strikingly-generous level of medical resources there, when compared with those in Ireland, and she recalls the ups and downs of the transition back to a consultant post in a large Irish teaching hospital.

More recently, Professor Breen has been in the news as the founder of forDoctors.ie, a coaching and mentoring service provided by doctors for doctors. Having worked as a consultant in critical care and anaesthesiology for many years, she’d seen first-hand the distress caused by burnout within the medical profession. She was taken aback, however, to discover that very few doctors seek support to ease their job-related pressures. “For example, an Irish Medical Organisation survey in 2021 found that only 7 per cent of Irish doctors reach out for support, but over 60 per cent report feelings of burnout and exhaustion,” she says.

After considering various potential solutions to the issue, Professor Breen concluded that a leading cause of medics’ exhaustion was having to juggle multiple non-clinical tasks and roles, like practice management and team leadership, on top of looking after their patients. And doctors are expected to simply keep going without the sort of necessary training or on the job coaching that is often routine in business. Hence forDoctors.ie. which operates with a panel of medical coaches.

“Doctors are high achievers by nature and want to give of their best,” she says, “however, they are currently facing enormous pressures in their lives with unprecedented demands on their time and services. Through action-focused coaching, doctors can recalibrate and take concrete steps towards their desired life and career goals, no matter what system they work in.”

This podcast is essential listening for anyone interested in critical care, education and quality in the Irish health system, and particularly those concerned with the issue of staff morale and medical leadership.

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Dr Ide Delargy, a general practitioner in Dublin, has been described by many of her colleagues in all branches of healthcare as truly ‘the loveliest of lifesavers’.

A GP Principal in Blackrock, County Dublin, Dr Delargy is Provost and Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners Republic of Ireland Faculty, National GP Co-Ordinator of Addiction Treatment Services with the HSE, former Director of the Substance Misuse Programme at the Irish College of General Practitioners, and founder and medical director of the Practitioner Health Matters Programme, Ireland’s first free independent treatment programme for healthcare professionals (which helped 113 of her colleagues in 2024).

In this episode, Dr Delargy recalls a happy musical and sporting childhood in Dublin, her GP training in Sligo and West Yorkshire, her first substantive posts in Wakefield and Glasgow, and how and why she came to develop a special interest in substance misuse practice and policy development. She also explains how her Diplomas in Leadership and Conflict Resolution proved invaluable in her professional and college work, as well as in caring for - and effectively assisting - so many of her colleagues in their hour of need.

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Professor Ray Walley is a general practitioner, academic and medical politician who’s been responsible for ground-breaking advances in Irish healthcare, ranging from the logistics of Covid vaccine delivery and out-of-hours GP cover in Dublin to major High Court settlements, the new Irish GP deal of 2018 and the orchestration of European medical organisations’ opposition to Cannabis legalisation. He is also one of the most frequently mentioned Irish medical practitioners online.

In addition to his busy clinical practice, Professor Walley has a bulging political and administrative CV: he is a past President of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) and former chairman of the IMO’s GP and International Affairs Committees, a Board Member, Treasurer and past Vice President of the Standing Committee of European Doctors, a member of the HSE GP Covid-19 Advisory Group, Clinical Lead in developing processes to deal with violent patients in General Practice, a Director of Medisec, the Irish medical indemnity insurance company, and a member of the Cannabis Risk Alliance, a loose grouping of medical professionals working to promote public appreciation of the hazards of cannabis.

In this episode, Professor Walley reminisces about a happy Dublin childhood near the Phoenix Park, his intense pride in his school (O’Connell’s in Drumcondra), his affection for the people of the North Inner city, and a work ethic which saw him gainfully employed in a famous Dublin 4 hotel throughout his medical school years. He traces the arc of a hugely successful and varied career through the Mater Hospital, Limerick, Letterkenny, East Sussex, and Falcarragh in Donegal, until his appointment to two North Dublin GMS sites, from where he led the establishment of the D-Doc Urgent Out-of-Hours GP Service - that ‘allowed GPs to have a life’ - and many other innovations. He recalls his political and organisational work with the IMO, the trojan work done by - and immense changes that were accelerated in - family medicine during the recent pandemic, and the consensus he’s helped to develop in Ireland and across Europe in relation to Cannabis legalisation and digital clinical records.

Ray recalls many of the people who were inspirational or indispensable to his professional and personal progress, he remains convinced that relationships are the key to success in everything medics aspire to do, and he liberally dispenses insights and tips, which make this conversation a must-listen for trainees, principals and politicians.

Professor Walley is indefatigably optimistic about the future of family medicine, and he reminds us all of the critical importance of General Practice in 21st Century healthcare.

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Professor James Bernard Walsh

Professor (‘JB’) Bernard Walsh, Clinical Professor in the Department of Medical Gerontology, at Trinity College Dublin, and Honorary Consultant at the Bone Health and Osteoporosis Treatment Unit of the Mercer’s Institute for Successful Ageing at St. James’s Hospital, is one of the outstanding geriatricians of his era.

Throughout his training Bernard was greatly influenced by many of the great masters of Irish and British Medicine, including - in Cork - the late Dr Michael Hyland, pioneer of geriatric medicine in Ireland, Professor Tim Counihan at the Mater Hospital in Dublin, Professor Gordon Mills in Liverpool, and - following his appointment as consultant at St James’s Hospital in Dublin - a series of ‘rock-star’ colleagues, such as Professors Davis Coakley, Rose Anne Kenny and Joe Harbison.

In this episode, Professor Walsh recalls his tough - and at times tragic - early years in Cork, and the invaluable lessons he learned in humility, gratitude, and human relations. He remembers pivotal moments of sheer good luck, kindness and serendipity that – along with hard work - took him into medical school and beyond. And he describes the evolution of St James’s Hospital in Dublin from a collection of 19th century workhouses into the beacon of world-class clinical, academic and research practice at the heart of Ireland’s capital that it has now become.

This is essential listening for those who are interested in ‘diversity’ in medical school applications, the vital importance of altruism (and philanthropy), the notion of good hospital management, the use of the Irish language in daily life, and the very meaning of ‘successful ageing’. Indeed, given his recent cycling trips between Cork and Dublin and around the Ring of Kerry, and his remarkably busy life as an academic, medical advisor to the Dublin Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes, and grandfather to a dozen doting grandchildren, listeners will hear a description of a veritable paragon of ‘successful ageing’!

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Dr Seamus O’Mahony, retired Consultant Gastroenterologist and Clinical Professor at Cork University Hospital, is the prize-winning author of four highly acclaimed books, the first of which, The Way We Die Now, won the British Medical Association’s Council Chair’s Choice award in 2017. Can Medicine be Cured? was published in 2019, and The Ministry of Bodies in 2021. His latest book, The Guru, the Bagman and the Sceptic, was published by Head of Zeus in 2023.

Seamus is a frequent contributor to the Dublin Review of Books, Observer, Irish Times, Lancet, British Medical Journal, Medical Independent, and Irish Independent, among others. He is a member of the Lancet commission on “The Value of Death” and is visiting professor at the Centre for the Humanities and Health at King’s College London.

In this seriously thought-provoking episode of Irish Medical Lives, Dr O’Mahony recalls the sometimes tragic lives of his forebears in West Cork and his adventures in academic research in Edinburgh, before addressing the thorny issues of corruption (or self-service) in modern medicine, the relative impotence of the modern hospital consultant, the ‘pointlessness’ of much of medical literature (and its insidious ‘replication crisis’), and way in which modern medicine has become a sort of ‘global religion’. And he explains why ‘the compression of morbidity’ (the near-elimination of suffering in old age promised by the healthy longevity movement) is a myth, why the public health services on both sides of the Irish Sea are so clearly failing and why the notion of a (peaceful, painless and neat) ‘good death’ is unlikely to be realised in more than a few cases.

Nonetheless, Seamus is optimistic that - given the right amounts of humility and honesty - the modern medic can still aspire to the most worthwhile and longstanding aspiration of all, ‘to make the conditions of human life everywhere more bearable’.

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Dr Declan Kelly, Chief Executive Officer of Eolas Medical, an innovative healthcare technology company based in Belfast, is a remarkable medical entrepreneur who has - over the course of a half-decade - created one of the most influential clinical information platforms in the English-speaking world.

Named after the Irish word for knowledge, the Eolas platform was created by Dr Kelly and his team of medical engineers to give clinicians instant and frictionless access to the knowledge they need to deliver effective and evidence-based care, and it has transformed how healthcare professionals interact with clinical guidelines, protocols and institutional knowledge. Eolas is now live in over 400 hospitals and healthcare sites, it covers 80% of the National Health Service in the UK, and it is used by 40% of doctors on the island of Ireland. And the mission statement is simple: to have the answer to any clinical question at every clinician’s fingertips, as and when they need it.

In this podcast, Declan recalls his grandfather’s experimentation with ‘early coding’, and the crucial importance of a great teacher at school, he explains how and why he came to undertake the coding needed for the new platform, and he describes how AI (artificial intelligence) – which is already having a major impact on contemporary healthcare – can be harnessed for the clear benefit of patients and professionals.

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Dr John Waterstone, Director of the Waterstone Clinics in Cork, Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford and former President of the Irish Fertility Society, is one of the true pioneers in fertility medicine in Ireland, and currently the most experienced specialist in reproductive medicine in the country.

In this episode of Irish Medical Lives, Dr Waterstone recalls his childhood in Kilkenny and Westmeath, his undergraduate days in Trinity College in Dublin (where he studied genetic science and medicine), and his specialist training in fertility care in London under the auspices of great British pathfinders, such as Professor Robert Winston.

John also tackles many of the questions commonly posed about fertility care in Ireland, and touches on some of the most recent advances and controversies, from delayed public funding of ‘IVF’ to the variability of actual ‘success rates’ between different services on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Considering a career in public health medicine?

Or wondering if there’s any point in getting involved in ‘medical politics’?

In this episode, Dr Rachel McNamara, a Specialist Registrar in Public Health Medicine, former National Fellow for Innovation with the HSE Spark Innovation Programme and the first female Chair of the Irish Medical Organisations NCHD Committee, discusses the wide range of public health issues with which her speciality is engaged at the moment, from the recent Covid-19 pandemic and ‘quad-demic’ to the assimilation of Ukrainian refugees and the HPV ‘catch-up’ campaign, and she recalls her role with the IMO in bringing about some landmark protections for NCHDs in Ireland in the last few years and highlighting the particular challenges for women in medicine.

Rachel also explains how her career choice was partly shaped by her father’s tragic death at an early age, why in addition to her MRCPI and Master’s in Public Health Medicine at University College Cork, she has obtained diplomas in Health Innovation, Medical Law, and Palliative Care, and why she now feels - on a personal level - that she is just where she is supposed to be - determined ‘to bring a user-centred, innovative lens to improving health services, driving improvements in patient outcomes and looking after the workforce along the way.

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What’s it like being a medical student in Dublin these days?

And is there more to the Intern Year than exhausting drudgery?

In this episode, Dr Maia Springael, a June 2024 medical graduate and Intern at Tallaght University Hospital, explains how French schools differ from those in Ireland, describes the lasting benefits of an early career in artistic gymnastics, and explains how she ‘came out of her shell’ during her Leaving Certificate year, and made the decision to study medicine. Maia also enthuses about the annual Student Medical Summit, the Intervarsity ‘SimWars’, her hugely useful ‘electives’ in Paris, Toulouse and Cork, and the envy-inducing medics’ professional completion programme at University College Dublin. She is also remarkably upbeat about her current job.

This is a must-listen for anyone considering a career in medicine or wondering how to survive (and thrive in) that first ‘Intern Year’.

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Are you baffled by conflicting advice about 'bad habits'?

Do you really want to live a longer, healthier and more meaningful life?

Dr Paddy Barrett, Consultant Cardiologist at Dublin’s Blackrock Clinic, is one of Ireland’s leading experts in lifestyle medicine, online and clinically, with particular emphasis on exercise and ‘aggressive management’ of cardiovascular risks factors, from lipid and blood pressure levels to irregular sleep patterns. He is also a veteran of - and expert in - burnout among medics. In this wisdom-peppered episode, Paddy recalls career-changing moments, like a near-drowning while surfing off the Donegal coast, when his only thought was ‘if I die now, my boss will kill me’, and his pivot away from a training programme in interventional cardiology in New York, after the suicides of several colleagues. He reflects on a career that has taken him from flying lessons and developing wearable health technology in San Diego to working in emergency medicine in Sydney, from an interest in burnout and subsequent collaboration with experts including Deepak Chopra and the founder of the Headspace meditation app, to daily application of Socrates’ famous but often disregarded dictum: ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’. Paddy quips that offering burned-out medics a free mindfulness app is more likely to make them quit their jobs than promoting genuine reflection, that focuses on identifying personal core values and allows people to ‘design’ – and ‘course correct’ - their own lives.

This episode will be especially useful for those who are unfamiliar with lifespan, healthspan and soulspan, and who’d like to enjoy a longer life, ‘packed with meaning and human connection’.

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