RCSI Safe and Sound Podcast

Dr Felipe Contepomi, RCSI Alumni, is an Argentine professional rugby coach who is currently the head coach of the Argentine national side.Contepomi was a rugby union footballer who played fly-half or centre; his last club was Club Newman, in the first division of the URBA championship, before signing with professional teams in Europe such as Leinster. He was a key player for Argentina, having played 15 years for the national team. Contepomi was inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame in November 2017On 31 May 2007, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in Dublin conferred him with the medical degrees of MB BCh BAO (NUI) LRCP&SI. He subsequently worked in Beaumont Hospital, Dublin.

Dr Claire Ashley, a burnout survivor and educator, is a GP with a degree in neuroscience and a postgraduate qualification in public health. As an NHS Clinical Entrepreneur, Doctors in Distress Ambassador, and WHO Fides Influencer, she offers valuable insights on how to effectively manage stress whilst creating a successful career. Dr Ashley helps individuals combat burnout and businesses build thriving workforces. @drclaireashley / www.drclaireashley.com

Since 2016 Collette has held the position of  Executive Director for the National Office of Clinical Audit (NOCA). Prior to this, Collette was an Operations Manager for the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), working on a programme of work in the Middle East. Collette worked for over 20 years as an accountant and management consultant, where she was responsible for change programmes across multiple sectors including banking, health insurance and the public sector in Ireland, Australia and the UK.

Dr. Aimee Gardner is the Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Director of the Academy of Medical Educators at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Her work has resulted in over 120 manuscripts and earned her Best Research Paper Awards from the Academy of Management, the Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE), and twice from the Association for Surgical Education. Dr. Gardner is also recipient of the AMEE Miriam Friedman Ben-David Young Educator award, an international honor bestowed to individuals who have made significant contributions to the field of health professions education in a relatively short time. Dr. Gardner currently serves as President-Elect of the Association for Surgical Education.

Helen has been supporting quality improvement within the health and care system for nearly 30 years. She has led and facilitated many nationwide initiatives to improve care, including in cancer services, urgent and emergency care, services for people living with dementia and care in the community. Helen has demonstrated a constancy of purpose and resilience to stay within the system over the years that is rare in internal change agents. She has managed to keep learning, growing and delivering change. Over time, her focus has shifted from managing big programmes of change to approaches that mobilise and build energy and commitment to change on a very large scale. Helen has an ability to connect directly with thousands of frontline staff and patient leaders. She is one of the top social influencers in healthcare globally, reaching more than a million people each month through her social media connections, virtual presentations, commentaries and blogs.

Dr. Carrie Cunningham is an associateprofessor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, Section head of the Massachusetts General Hospital Endocrine Surgery Unit and a senior scientist at the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute for Technology Assessment. She is the Association of Endocrine Surgeons research committee chair and executive council member and the President-elect of the Association of Academic Surgery. Her overarching research mission has been to improve the health and well-being of patients with benign and malignant endocrine-related diseases. She is the principal investigator of an NIH/NCI R-37 (R01-type merit award) award to examine the potential impact of new diagnostic technologies and personalized management strategies in patients with thyroid cancer using mathematical disease simulation modeling and an American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award to develop a patient-reported instrument to assess thyroid-cancer specific quality of life. 

Dr. Dale Whelehan is a behaviour scientist with a diverse range of experience comprising human capital, culture, change management, workforce experience, performance consulting, organisational behaviour, and representation and rights. Having originally trained as a physiotherapist, Dale completed a PhD exploring the impact of fatigue and sleep deprivation in healthcare workers, particularly surgeons, and has published extensively in this field. More recently, Dale was a senior human capital consultant for Deloitte Ireland where he specialised in behavioural science implementation to enable large scale organisational change. Considered an expert in the field of wellbeing, Dale is passionate about the intrinsic role work plays in fatigue and performance - and how shorter working hours can bring about radical transformation for people's health and happiness.

Professor Oscar Traynor, Director of International Surgical Training Programmes, RCSI Professor Traynor graduated from University College Dublin School of Medicine in 1974 and completed his basic and senior surgical training with RCSI. He received numerous honours as a student and trainee including the O'Farrell Gold Medal for Surgery, the McArdle Prize for Clinical Surgery and a Fogarty Foundation Fellowship from the National Institutes of Health of the United States. He was awarded the President's Prize of the Surgical Section of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland for his research in 1984 and was the first recipient of the RCSI Surgical Travelling Fellowship in 1985. His research into pre-neoplastic and field changes in the colon during carcinogenesis led to the granting of an MCh degree by thesis in 1986. Professor Traynor was appointed as Consultant Surgeon at St Vincent's University Hospital in 1987. He has published his clinical data in more than 100 peer-reviewed journals and has supervised his trainees in the successful completion, presentation, and publication of their research projects.

RCSI is pleased to announce that our Safe and Sound podcast season finale “Hard to stomach: Alan O'Gorman tells his story as a patient who experienced a surgical never event” is now available to listen to on Spotify and Apple podcasts. 

Senator David Norris is an Irish scholar, independent Senator, and gay and civil rights activist. Born in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, David Norris is a former Trinity College lecturer and member of the Oireachtas. He has served in Seanad Éireann since 1987 and is the first openly gay person to be elected to a public office in Ireland. He is an expert on James Joyce and is associated with the James Joyce Cultural Centre, Dublin and the Irish Georgian Society. David Norris campaigned to overthrow the anti-homosexuality laws in Ireland and ran for the President of Ireland in October 2011.

Dara O'Keeffe is the Simulation Lead in Postgraduate Surgical Education and Training at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. She trained in surgery in Ireland for eight years before entering the field of medical education in 2006. At RCSI she designed and implemented national assessments in technical and non-technical skills, before moving to Boston in 2010. There she held the position of Assistant Director of Simulation-based Learning at the Brigham and Women's hospital and a faculty appointment at Harvard Medical School. In 2015, she returned to RCSI to further expand the postgraduate simulation curriculum in Surgery and Emergency Medicine. She has over a decade of experience in simulation curriculum planning and delivery across all specialties and allied healthcare professionals, specialising in assessment. She has completed a fellowship in Surgical Education Research and a Masters in Health Professions Education with University of Illinois Chicago. She is a member of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare and a founding committee member of the Irish Association for Simulation.

Prof Ian Robertson is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin (1999–2016) and was the founding Director of Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, as well as Dean of Research of Trinity College, from 2004–2007. Ian is Founding Director of GBHI at Trinity.   Ian studied and trained at Glasgow University and the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College, London. Currently Emeritus Professor at Trinity College Dublin and Co-Director of GBHI, he previously spent 8 years at the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge University and before that at Edinburgh University.

Dr Chris Turner is consultant in emergency medicine at University Hospitals of Coventry and Warwickshire. He is interested in governance and highly performing teams, and this has led him on a journey from being blame and process focused to something completely different, Civility Saves Lives, a campaign that aims to raise awareness of the impact of behaviour on performance. Over the last few years this idea has gained momentum and traction across healthcare and beyond.

Professor Steven Yule is Chair of Behavioural Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, and leader of the Edinburgh Surgical Sabermetrics Group. He is also Programme Director of the MSc in Patient Safety and Clinical Human Factors within Edinburgh Surgery Online, and Director of Non-Technical Skills at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Professor Yule is an academic psychologist and human factors scientist; internationally recognized for his work in non-technical skills, patient safety, and surgical team simulation. He has extensive experience studying team performance across industrial sectors, including healthcare, energy, transportation, space exploration, and elite athletics. Current work includes automating assessments of technical and team skills, embedding video and sensors to measure clinical expertise, and translating performance analytics from professional sports to enhance surgical performance in low, middle and high resource contexts. Research conducted by the Edinburgh Surgical Sabermetrics Group is funded by National Institutes for Health (NIH), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Melville Trust for Care and Cure of Cancer, Canadian Department of National Defence, United States Airforce, Johnson & Johnson, The Circulation Foundation, and Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Before joining the Faculty at Univeristy of Edinburgh, Prof Yule was Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School (2011-2020) and Director of Research, Education and Innovation at the STRATUS Center for Medical Simulation, Brigham & Women's Hosptal in Boston, USA.

Martin Bromiley OBE FRCSEd (ad hom), Founder of the Clinical Human Factors Group, UK Martin Bromiley is “Dad” to his family living in Buckinghamshire. Professionally he is a Training Captain for a major UK airline and has a background specialising in human performance and safety. In 2005 his then wife died as a result of human error during routine surgery. He subsequently founded the Clinical Human Factors Group, www.chfg.org a charity which has not only had a major influence on healthcare policy and practice but has also directly saved lives around the world. As part of his role he has worked in an advisory capacity at senior levels in healthcare in the UK and internationally. Martin has also worked with an increasing number of organisations outside of healthcare who want to understand how we can “make it easy to get it right”. Martin has contributed to TV and Radio news in the UK and abroad, as well as documentaries such as the BBC Horizon science series and has featured in a number of articles on the topic of culture change, safety and human performance ranging from the New Scientist and the Times to Private Eye

Professor Eva Doherty, Director of Human Factors in Patient Safety, DClinPsych, CClinPsychol (AFPsSI), CPsychol (AFBPsS), PFHEA, FEACH. Eva is a practising clinical psychologist, Associate Professor and Director of the Human Factors in Patient Safety (HFPS) training, research and assessment programme at the National Surgical Training Centre, Department of Surgical Affairs, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences. The HFPS training is a mandatory component of the postgraduate professional training for surgical, emergency medicine, radiology and ophthalmology trainees. The programme provides interactive workshops for trainees and more recently for consultants on topics which include medical error, risk management, communication, teamwork, conflict resolution, decision-making, open disclosure, emotional intelligence, crisis management, resilience, professionalism and leadership. Eva pioneered and currently directs the academic Postgraduate Diploma/MSc in Human Factors in Patient Safety which is an inter-professional one/two year part-time online programme. Eva's recent publications and research interests include communication issues in Irish hospitals; personality factors in medical education and the assessment of improvements and remediation of communication skills. In recognition of Eva's contribution to medical education and to communication training in healthcare, Eva was awarded a Principal Fellowship by the Higher Education Academy in the U.K. and an honorary fellowship by the International Association for Communication in Healthcare.