Medical Alumni and Faculty Newsletter No. 13 Spring 2015 Contents Diary in Pictures p2 Introduction / Welcome p3 Memories are made of this p4 What is Improbable is Probable p7 Ainsworth Scholarship Dr John McCullough; Dr Bill Cashman Dr Pat Cogan, Dr Marion Smith p8 Jennings Gallery p9 Running, my release from reality p11 Flanagan Medal p12 1974 Class Reunion p13 Alumni Awards Dr Annette Dillon; Dr Timothy Jackson Dr Gearoid Fitzgerald; Dr Rachael Cusack p14 Class of 1984 Reunion p14 Medical Alumni & Faculty Scientific Conference 2014 p19 HRB Clinical Research Facility p21 Appreciations Prof Cillian Twomey; Dr Patrick O’Herlihy Prof Katy Keohane; Dr Mary Wickham; Dr Charlie Shanahan; Dr Mary McCarthy Dr Helen Hynes; Dr Aislinn Joy Dr Diarmuid Murray; Dr Gary Lee Prof Catherine Keohane Introduction Welcome elcome to the UCC Medical Alumni Dr John Barrett , 1969 graduate, received a Schools to foster stronger academic links WNewsletter and very best wishes for Distinguished Alumnus Award. John has now at undergraduate and postgraduate level. 2015. For me, the past year has been a very retired as Chief of Trauma at Cook County If you can assist in this enedeavour please full one, with the opportunity and pleasure of Hospital, Chicago, where he developed a contact me at [email protected] or meeting and hearing from so many recent and specialised centre, with great experience in [email protected] older Alumni . There was a great attendance at gunshot wounds. He worked extensively with The newsletter includes articles of interest from the Annual Scientific Meeting in September at civic authorities to establish citywide access alumni, a synopsis of some of the ongoing Brookfield, and the increasing trend to link this to emergency services, resulting in reduced projects at the Clinical Research Centre based event with class reunions works well. My own mortality from trauma. He also worked with at the Mercy University Hospital, extracts from class of 1974 celebrated its 40th anniversary the police, law makers and schools to foster the Scientific meeting 2014 and class reunions, of graduation, an account of which is in the education and crime prevention. Cook County and appreciations of recently deceased alumni. newsletter. Where did the time go! Hospital is very well known throughout the US and recognised worldwide, since the TV The UCC Medical Alumni also administer the In 2014, UCC honoured two distinguished series” ER ‘’was based on its trauma centre. See Professor Denis O’ Sullivan Clinical Research Medical Alumni. Prof Daniel J Penny, 1986 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-alAQE Fellowship, the Raymond Shanahan prize, and graduate, currently Chief of Paedatric GLDJY&list=UUftTWeXBFR577BfyPWm6atQ the Ainsworth Scholarship, details of which Cardiology at Texas Children’s Hospital and are included. I encourage you all to attend the Professor of Paediatrics at Baylor College of The medical School at UCC continues to Scientific Conference on September 3rd 2015. Medicine, was awarded the Medical School expand and alumni are now actively practising Sincere thanks to the Committee and to Rachel Medal for his contributions to Medicine and in every corner of the globe. We want to hear Hyland for assistance in all matters to do with humanity. Dan formerly headed cardiology at from you, and would like to stay in touch medical Alumni! ■ the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne and with you all. If you are interested in being a his research involves clinical and physiological contact person for UCC Medical Alumni in Katy Keohane, Chair UCC Medical aspects of congenital heart disease. He has your area (especially those working overseas) Alumni Committee. also been very instrumental in the planning, please get in touch, and contribute to our development and establishment of a new website: http://www.ucc.ie/en/medical/ cardiovascular centre in Hue, Vietnam, aboutus/medalumni/. We are also interested enabling hundreds of children to be treated. in linking with Alumni in overseas Medical Prof Mary Horgan, Dean Welcome cross the world, UCC medical graduates We are very excited by our new student student exchanges, summer electives and Aare renowned for their clinical excellence, exchange programmes. In January our first post-graduate opportunities. We value your research skills, leadership and innovation. cohort of students began their exchange at mentorship and your experience. Please keep We continue to educate world-class doctors University of Lille. in touch, visit our website and learn about in our state -of -the -art -facilities under the the initiatives and opportunities available to Research is top of the agenda at UCC and guidance of our superb clinical teachers. But medical students at UCC. again this year our students have published educating students to become doctors is only and presented their research projects all over The best medical schools in the world part of our remit- we are also responsible for the world. are based outside capital cities. UCC is no our graduates’ lifelong learning across the exception. continuum of medical education. This is why The School of Medicine at UCC is a dynamic the College of Medicine and Health at UCC and changing environment- we embrace the Our warmest wishes for 2015 and we look and the School of Medicine is pioneering and challenges of 21st Century Healthcare and forward to hearing from you. ■ driving a range of Continuous Professional count ourselves privileged to train world- Professor Mary Horgan, Dean Development activities informed by best class doctors who are proud to call UCC their School of Medicine UCC practice in medical education and professional Alma Mater. There are many ways you can and societal needs. help the medical school and we welcome 2 Prof Barry O’Donnell Memories are made of this hose were the days my friends to the ‘College’ because she knew I would be Professor of Surgery and Jimmy Donovan, T‘We thought they’d never end’ emigrating, almost certainly permanently. Professor of Medicine. Neither had worked or studied outside Cork. Jimmy was full of Memory plays tricks but about ninety of us UCC Medical School 1943-1949 erudition and common sense and had his started in that autumn of 1943. Premed was priorities right. He went to England (always hen I was born in Cork in 1926 my life Physics, J J McHenry was a star. Just what we ‘England’ as the Germans have it: never the Wexpectancy, as an Irish male was 56 thought a professor should be, Chemistry, yes UK, a later invention) to ‘meetings’ and told years. Yet this year I will have been sixty- I remember who it was but he wasn’t a star, us what was happening there. PK was entirely five years a doctor. So I am a lucky one. But but Louis Renoulf made Biology interesting. self-taught. He had an incredible memory, was then I always was. How could I be otherwise The great academic and dramatic teacher of a great anatomist, and knew the names of all in delivered as I was by the late great “JJ” Kearney. anatomy, M A MacConnaill (Mac), dominated the class within a few days of meeting them, a first and second medical. I failed anatomy in My years at UCC, 1943-1949, were really happy daunting facility. Everything had five features, second medical because I ‘put’ the oesophagus despite the relative frugality of our lives by one for each of his strong fingers. This system on the wrong side of the aorta in the exam. I comparison with the present. Being ‘Cork’ I I transferred to subsequent examinations with was on a team rugby trip to Dublin when the thought that UCC was a sort of bonsai version some success. of Harvard (‘small but perfectly formed’) oesophagus was discussed. Mac said “Your and although Boston was reportedly bigger knowledge was like a piece of elastic: you Tim Counihan of Killarney topped the 1947 (actually thirty times bigger) we thought of stretched it and stretched it and eventually MB graduating class and is alive and well living ourselves as being more or less ‘twinned’ with holes began to appear in it”. I often thought in Dublin’s Shrewsbury Road. He and Paddy that Hub of the Universe. of this when I was subsequently operating Collins (first in Surgery) of Cobh both became on perhaps sixty cases of oesophageal Professors in Dublin. It would be difficult to Food and clothing were rationed (“Don’t you atresia. Physiology was taught by whispering find two more contrasting personalities, which know there’s a war on“); there was no travel Prof. Frank Kane, whose heart was in Howth, only goes to show that Medicine with a big M outside the country though I did snatch a trip and he left us for the RCSI. Third medical can accommodate a wide spectrum of people. to London in 1947 representing the Student was Pathology and Professor and Dean Billy Council. There was still smoke coming from The late Denis O’Sullivan of Macroom and the Donovan who was a keen photographer the bombed buildings. Even a trip to Belfast late John Kiely Jr. from Cork topped the 1948 introduced us to lectures with slides. Up to with the Philosophy in 1947, as it was then, class. It had been said that if you had rubbed that it was ‘talk and chalk’. Still looking at to debate with Queen’s University’s ‘Literific’ your behind against the bridge in Macroom my old notes …you may not believe it but I was an exciting prospect and my first sight it was as good as an Oxbridge education. kept them for fifty years… I note that I spelt of police with guns. Travel within our country Denis was hugely popular even then and Koch’s bacillus (the tuberculosis bug) as coke’s was uncertain; trains to Dublin often took there was great student dismay when he was more than twelve hours and rugby club passed over for the top post, house physician supporters travelled (illegally) to Limerick on to Jimmy Donovan.