Dr. Áine Carroll, MB, BCh, MD, FRCP, FRCPI is the National Director, Clinical Strategy and Programmes Division of the Health Service Executive Directorate in the Republic of Ireland. We recently posed our 7 Questions to Dr. Carroll.


1. What are your key areas of interest and research?

  1. Clinicians in leadership and management
  2. Implementation science
  3. Computer brain interfaces and disability; the opportunities for technology in facilitating participation
  4. Cost effectiveness of rehabilitation

2. What are the major challenges in your field?

Apart from obvious financial challenges, the biggest challenge is the increasing life expectancy and the increased incidence of non-communicable diseases and the need to reverse flow out of hospital and into the community. We also need to be braver and support older people at home as independently as possible and think more about quality of life rather than quantity of life.


3. What is your top management tip?

Be kind and be an active listener.


4. What would you single out as a career highlight?

Seeing patients exceed their personal rehabilitation goals.


5. If you had not chosen this career path you would have become a…?

I have never wanted to be anything else but a doctor, apart from a brief notion of being an astronaut when I was around 7 years old.


6. What are your personal interests outside of work?

Spending time with my family, my children, gardening, reading and currently researching my grandfather’s army career in the first word war.


7. Your favourite quote?

“Be the change you want to see” - Ghandi


Originally from Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, Dr. Áine Carroll studied medicine at Queens University in Belfast and did a postgraduate MD at Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne. She completed her higher specialist training in Rehabilitation Medicine in Newcastle upon Tyne and came to work in Dublin in 2005.


Dr. Carroll is a Consultant in Rehabilitation Medicine, and was formerly Chair of the Medical Board of the National Rehabilitation Hospital, Republic of Ireland. She is also a former President of the Irish Association of Rehabilitation Medicine and Senior Clinical Lecturer, University College Dublin.


In her current role as the National Director, Clinical Strategy and Programmes Division of the Health Service Executive Directorate in the Republic of Ireland, Dr. Carroll’s focus is on the consolidation of the achievements of the programmes to date by supporting regional and local teams with implementation to ensure effective changes. The National Clinical Programmes were established to improve and standardise patient care throughout the organisation by bringing together clinical disciplines and enabling them to share innovative solutions to deliver greater benefits to every user of HSE services. 


As clinical services have interdependencies with each other, the aim of the programmes is to improve individual specialty delivery and to promote integrated care and team work across services and specialties. This will ensure that care is provided effectively and seamlessly to patients as they move through the system. 


She has published on a wide variety of topics, including life expectancy determination in disability, the use of Botulinum toxin in spinal pain, osteoporosis in disability, whiplash injury and has presented at many national and international conferences.




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