Meet the Consultant - Prof. Dominic Hegarty interviewed by the Mater Private Network

Professor Dominic Hegarty, a Consultant in Pain Management and Clinical Director in the Mater Private Network in Cork, brings over two decades of experience to the field of pain medicine. With a background that spans training at UCC and extensive work across Europe, Prof. Hegarty is dedicated to providing personalised pain management solutions. 

In this interview with the Mater Private Network, Cork he shares his approach to addressing patient concerns and tailoring treatments to optimise outcomes, emphasising the importance of understanding each individual's unique needs.

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My name is Professor Dominic Hegerty. I'm a pain consultant and deal with pain management in neuromodulation.

I've been in the area of pain medicine for over 20 years at this stage. I've been working in the Mater Network for the last 5 Years based in Cork. So I've been enjoying the area of pain medicine and helping patients out for quite a long long period of time.

My initial training started in UCC in Cork and helped as you went through the anaesthetic world because you train to become a pain physician and then I traveled to London and was lucky enough to be involved with a number of centres across Europe. As I kind of got the portfolio and my skill bases to improve.

Treating pain is really a personalised element for each individual. So you almost have to tailor a specific program for everyone. So the key important point for me really, is trying to understand where the source of pain is what are the drivers what are the aggravating factors, and more importantly what are the outcomes the individual wants from the pain perspective that's the most important part.

There are a few items that worry patients when they come to see us first. Firstly is this the end of the road is this the very last chance they have and obviously many people would have gone through several disciplines before they get to the pain world. That's usually the way it happens in an Irish model and most of Europe. So I'm very conscious of that aspect so the first thing that's obvious is to to work out where they are on that pain pathway. Where can we assist matters and where can we make things a little bit easier.

So I try to reassure them initially that we just need to work out where they are and that's the starting point. So that's always the first winning point as to say. There's an option for people.

The second one then is the concept of having to be stuck with either medication or potentially injections on a regular basis. That often puts people off. One of the goals we would have is to try and optimise that and to minimise the amount of medication that people are on.

So we're very experienced. We understand the stresses these individuals have when they come to the hospital, when they go through the procedure, their after care. So we do our very best to optimise this. So that it's a good experience overall and if we're emotionally in a good place and we're having a pain procedure, if we can understand what we want from it and then it's in everybody's interest that we move forward.

So reassurance, giving the individuals the confidence that that everybody is on the same page together, then that's very very important for our people.

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