A FERMANAGH South West Acute Hospital-based cardiologist has been recognised by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) as a professor.

Professor Monica Monaghan, who is also a Fermanagh native, was recognised in part due to her role in educating the doctors of the future.

Prof. Monaghan had previously served as an Honorary Senior Lecturer with the RCSI.

Speaking to The Impartial Reporter on receiving the honour, SWAH-based Prof. Monaghan said: “I was recommended for it through the RCSI. I feel honoured and humble, but I suppose I look on it very much as a team effort.

“The RCSI send medical students to us [in the SWAH] every year; third years and final years.

“We have a group of consultants who actively teach these medical students. We are also a university teaching hospital for Queen’s University.”

Speaking on the SWAH’s role as a teaching hospital, Prof. Monaghan said: “I have been Clinical Lead for the students from the RCSI coming over the past couple of years, and we provide them with an incredible learning opportunity.

“Throughout the Covid pandemic, the medical students have been following all [Western] Trust guidance and have been able to access the wards and clinical activities the entire time.

“That has been great, because these are our doctors of the future, and if we don’t educate these medical students and give them clinical experience, we’re not going to have a cohort for [qualification in] August.”

Prof. Monaghan deeply praised the “team effort” behind educating medical students and junior doctors in the Western Trust.

She said: “Myself and Dr. Sandra McNeil, who leads for the Queen’s students in the Altnagelvin, work very closely together with the Med Ed West [Medical and Dental Education] team of administrators.

“So it’s really a big team effort to try to roster the students in a safe way, particularly during a pandemic.

“There is a great sense of collegiality in the SWAH; an embracement of medical students for teaching, and we couldn’t do this without the support of our administration team.”

Speaking on the ins and outs of her role as a professor, she said: “To my mind, every day’s a school day. We teach junior doctors, we teach nursing students, we work very closely as well with our allied health professionals, and pharmacists.

“I have spent a number of years in research, and I still actively write papers, and publish and carry out audit and quality improvement work.

“So that’s very much part of when you work with a university. It [the appointment] is a recognition of this as well.”

Varied career

Prof. Monaghan has had a varied career up this point, from having left Mount Lourdes Grammar School in 1992. She studied medicine at Queens University Belfast, took time out to study for a research PhD in Molecular Biology, and worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at Queens.

She also completed a fellowship at St. Bartholomew’s Heart Centre, London, where she specialised in cardiac MRI – a procedure she now carries out for the entire Western Trust from the SWAH.

Prof. Monaghan will continue to focus on her patients, as she explained.

“At the end of the day, I am a cardiologist by heart and by trade, and that is what I love to do. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a professor or a doctor or anything else.

“What I love most of all is sitting down and talking to a patient, communicating with them and listening to their story, and trying to make them better, to get them home to their family.

“We can’t cure everybody, but what we can do is offer comfort and care. That’s still what I love the most about my job.”