MaterCare International is pleased to announce Dr. Dermot Kearney presenting in our 2019 Rome Conference programme.

Dr. Kearney is a consultant cardiologist and current President of the Catholic Medical Association (UK). He obtained a medical degree from UCD (Dublin, Ireland) in 1989. Following General Medical and Cardiology specialist training in Ireland, Dr. Kearney completed a Fellowship in Interventional Cardiology in Leiden and Amsterdam, Netherlands 2001-2003. His current cardiology post, since 2003, is at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Gateshead. Dr. Kearney joined the Catholic Medical Association (UK) in 2008. Has been a CMA (UK) Council member since 2010 and was Honorary Registrar from 2011 until 2018. Since April 2018 has been President of the CMA (UK).

His Rome Conference presentation is entitled, “Navigating the course with Faith and Courage: Challenges facing Catholic Healthcare Professionals in the UK”.

Abstract: This presentation will address the current and recent ethical challenges facing Catholic doctors, nurses, midwives and pharmacists, practicing in the UK. Specifically, the topics addressed will include implications arising from the infamous Glasgow midwives case, campaigns for the decriminalisation of abortion and assisted suicide, challenges to pharmacists’ right to conscientious objection to issuing “emergency contraception”, attempts to make abortion and contraception more widely available and to be considered essential healthcare services, Royal Colleges changing their positions on the important life issues from opposition to neutrality on assisted suicide to fervent support for the decriminalisation of abortion and cases involving the withdrawal of basic nutrition and hydration from infants and adults resulting in death by starvation and dehydration.

How Catholics in healthcare (and others similarly affected) respond creatively to these challenges will be described.