Dr Fergal Hickey, emeritus consultant in emergency medicine in Sligo University Hospital, where he was first appointed in 1995, is someone’s whose voice is familiar to every radio listener and TV viewer who is concerned with the functioning and state of Ireland’s emergency departments.

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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Professor Garry Courtney, Consultant Gastroenterologist and Clinical Director at St. Luke’s Hospital, Kilkenny, is National Clinical Lead in the Acute Medicine Programme, Regional Programme Director for BST/HST at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, and Treasurer of the Irish Society of Gastroenterology.

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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