Working life: Helen Connaughton, Nurse specialist, Tallaght Hospital
The centre opens early to facilitate patients who come in for bloods before heading to work or school.
Three patients are scheduled to come for what is essentially a free heart screening service.
Over the course of about two-and-a-half hours, they undergo an ECG, heart ultrasound, and an exercise test.
They meet with a consultant before they leave and are given results and follow-up is discussed.
Our aim is to provide a comprehensive evaluation of those diagnosed with, or at risk from, inherited heart disease, particularly at a young age, as well as their families.
I grab a coffee before the next trio of patients arrive. They include relatives of victims of sudden cardiac death where the cause may be inherited.
Patients diagnosed with potentially inherited heart diseases are also seen, and relatives evaluated where appropriate.
Lunch is brief. Afterwards, a family of five arrives. We tend to see larger families who have to travel further distances to get here in the afternoon.
Some have lost a member through sudden adult death. The death may have occurred many years ago but the screening service we offer was not available back then.
Part of my role is to see if I can locate post-mortem results, sometimes going back 20 years. I liaise with coroners and in some cases I go to the National Archives.
There can be quite a bit of detective work but I need to have as much information as possible when families come in.
One Thursday a month we run a combined clinic with our consultant cardiologist Dr Deirdre Ward and a paediatric consultant cardiologist from Crumlin Hospital Dr Terry Prendeville.
We see adults and children of all ages in these clinics which allow all family members to be seen together. We’ve been running these clinics for four years and they’ve proved very popular.
We held a basic Life Support Training Day today for friends and family so it was pretty hectic.
No rest for the weary though — home to train for the VHI mini marathon in June, with my husband, a personal trainer, putting me through my paces.
* Helen Connaughton, Nurse specialist, Centre for Cardiac Risk in Young Persons (CRYP), Tallaght Hospital
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