Leading with Hearts and Minds

Petrina Donnelly has spent thirty-three years in nursing, from a hospital ward in Craigavon to one of Ireland's new Regional Director of Nursing and Midwifery posts. Ask how she got there, and the answer is rarely a plan — it's a series of people who encouraged her to take the next step before she felt ready. She talks to Marie Kilduff about the mentors who shaped her, what it's actually like to lead a brand-new region with no map and no handover, her vision for a genuinely integrated health service, and how a senior leader keeps going without running herself down, with a returning contribution from her former colleague Paul Gallagher, recorded before his retirement.

What does it take to nurse someone whose privacy is gone, whose environment magnifies every symptom, and whose relationship with the health system has, until now, been broken or absent? Enda Kelly has spent more than three decades finding out.

Enda is National Nurse Manager for Operations with the Irish Prison Service, a Fellow of the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and is currently a year into a PhD on the intersection of law, ethics, and prison regulation. In this conversation, he speaks to Marie Kilduff about what prison nursing actually involves — clinically, ethically, and personally — and about the leadership practice he's built over a career.

What does it take to provide therapy to the people who provide care? Marie Kilduff speaks with Morgan Lucey, Head of National Employee Assistance Services in the HSE's Workplace Health and Wellbeing Unit, about the service that supports more than 100,000 healthcare staff across Ireland.

IF YOU NEED SUPPORT.

For HSE staff: Phone (national line): 0818 327 327

Email (referrals): eap.referral@hse.ie

Online resource hub:

www.inspiresupporthub.org/HSE-EAPandME

Website: www.hse.ie/EAPandME

Credits: Leading with Hearts and Minds is hosted by Marie Kilduff.

In this episode, Marie Kilduff speaks with Adam Harris, CEO of As I Am, Ireland's national autism charity. Adam is autistic himself, and that lived experience shapes everything he does — from founding As I Am over twelve years ago to leading the organisation's work across healthcare, employment, education and community inclusion.

Adam speaks candidly about growing up autistic in Ireland in the 1990s, navigating a system that had little awareness of autism, and the isolation he felt as a teenager before finding his voice as a writer and advocate. From that starting point, he built one of Ireland's most respected disability organisations — one that places autistic people at the centre of everything it does.

In this episode, Adam and Marie discuss:

What it means to move beyond awareness towards genuine acceptance of autistic people
Why autism should be understood as an accessibility issue, not a deficit
The barriers autistic people face when accessing healthcare — and how relatively simple changes can make a significant difference
The policy landscape shaping autism support in Ireland includes the Autism Innovation Strategy and the National Human Rights Strategy for Disabled People.
The Same Chance Report — As I Am's annual state of the community report on autistic life in Ireland

Contact As I Am

https://asiam.ie

17-21 Temple Road, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, A94 DN40

If you would prefer to contact As I Am by phone to discuss your query, please call (01) 445 3203

Leading with Hearts and Minds is a podcast from the National Clinical Leadership Centre for Nursing and Midwifery.

Two careers. And a conversation recorded at exactly the right moment.

Finn Gallagher's career began in a locked ward in Letterkenny in 1953. He retired as Chief Nursing Officer, having helped reshape mental health services in Ireland from the ground up. His son Paul followed in his footsteps into nursing and is currently the Regional Director of Nursing and Midwifery — a role he will leave later this year.

In this episode, Marie Kilduff sits down with both of them — together, for the first time on the podcast.

What emerges is rarer than a career retrospective. It's a conversation about the decisions that define a life — recorded while Paul is still in post, and Finn can still remember what it felt like to be where his son is now. A young nurse choosing a ward over the Gardaí, guided by a single question from an older man he had rarely met. A father stepping back from his son's first day so the son could find his own footing. A wife's four words that settled a move that felt like emigrating.

Paul returns to Leading with Hearts and Minds, having previously shared his own story. This time, Finn is in the room — and what passes between them says as much as anything either man puts into words.

For anyone in nursing or healthcare leadership, this episode carries something quietly useful: what influence looks like when it's patient, what mentorship looks like when it asks rather than tells, and what it means to hand something on.

In this episode:

Why Finn nearly joined the Gardaí — and what stopped him
Paul's memory of his father at work, and what it planted in him
The decision to move from Donegal to Limerick — and the conversation that made it possible
What both men would say to the next generation of nursing leaders

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