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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