Show Notes
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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