\u201cMy heart always lay with either teaching or nursing, but nursing won out, and in 1991, I began training in Belfast City Hospital. Moving in with friends from home and living independently for the first time was a huge thrill.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter qualifying in 1994, I worked in the Channel Islands before moving to Dublin. I started working<\/a> in the National Drug Treatment Centre. I quickly realised how much I enjoyed the work \u2014 meeting interesting people, hearing their stories and helping where I could. I was lucky to land among a great group of colleagues, and I\u2019ve stayed in addiction services since.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the early 2000s, I took a career break and travelled in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Along the way, I worked in drug courts and prison health services in New South Wales, and in Vancouver\u2019s supervised injection site and detox services. It was a brilliant learning experience to see different approaches to addiction and treatment.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I returned to Dublin, I applied for the role of clinical nurse specialist in hepatitis C liaison. Back then, hepatitis C treatment was long and difficult, with mixed success. That changed with the arrival of new direct-acting antivirals. Treatment is now tablet-only, short in duration, very well tolerated and has an extremely high cure rate.<\/p>\n \u201cIn 2017, the National Treatment Programme began a pilot that allowed suitable patients to receive hepatitis C treatment in the same clinics where they attend for opioid substitution therapy. Working with Dr Margaret Bourke, whose tireless energy has been a driving force behind the project, we began treating people on site, bringing care to where patients already were. Since then, we\u2019ve treated people across Dublin and beyond.<\/p>\n \u201cAlongside treatment, we focus on liver health, alcohol awareness, healthy weight and reducing risk of re-infection. Liver disease is rising globally, but hepatitis C is highly curable. If you think you may have been at risk, testing and treatment are straightforward, including the home test from the National Hepatitis C Treatment Programme at hepctest.ie, and hospital services provide excellent care.<\/p>\n \u201cOutside of work, life is busy and happy \u2014 two dogs, two children and a very patient husband.\u201d<\/p>\n The HSE has expanded its free hepatitis C home testing service to include a new rapid oral swab test. It delivers results in 20 minutes and can be ordered online, see hepctest.ie<\/a> and exa.mn\/Hep-C<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cMy heart always lay with either teaching or nursing, but nursing won out, and in 1991, I began…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[33970,26054,24255,103,61,60],"class_list":["post-461491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health-body","tag-health-life","tag-working-life","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}