Mid-Cork doctor wins Person of the Month award

AUTHOR OF THOUGHT-PROVOKING NEW BOOK ON HOW MODERN SOCIETY MANAGES DEATH IS HONOURED

THE author of a moving and thought-provoking book which proposes the idea that modern hospitals can deprive people of ‘a good death’ has been unveiled as the Cork Person of the Month for November.

In ‘ The Way We Die Now’ Carrigadrohid man Dr Seamus O’Mahony, a consultant gastroenterologist at the CUH, offers a fascinating insight into death from the unique viewpoint of a medical doctor.

‘Death, for most people, is a rumour; something that happens to others, far away. But it is the last thing you will ‘do’ – or which will happen to you – and the likelihood is that it will take place in an acute hospital or a care home orchestrated by strangers,’ writes Dr O’Mahony in the prologue.

In the book Dr O’Mahony, an associate editor for Medical Humanities at the Journal of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh, then goes on to explain why he considers that modern acute hospitals ‘make a good death increasingly difficult’.

He points to how doctors working in general hospitals often face extremely difficult decisions about frail, elderly people in terms of how far they should go with medical treatment and potentially invasive interventions.

“The deaths I see are frequently undignified. The dying very often have not accepted or understood the situation, the truth denied them by well-intentioned relatives

Cork author Dr Seamus O’Mahony , the author of ‘The Way We Die Now’ a book that calls for the ‘demedicalisation of death and dying’ being presented with his Cork Person of the Month’ award for November. Also pictured (L-R) : Manus O’Callaghan, Awards Organiser; John Lehane, Lexus Cork; Tina Quinn, AM O’Sullivan PR and Pat Lemasney, Southern. Photo: Tony O’Connell Photography.

and doctors. Their death has been stolen from them,” said Dr O’Mahony.

Person of the Year award organiser, Mallow-man Manus O’Callaghan, said that the book had kick-started an important conversation about how death and the process of dying is dealt with in modern society.

“The majority of us will die in a modern hospital in the care of strangers, more likely than not after a long and undignified series of excessive and hopeless medical interventions,” said Mr O’Callaghan.

“Seamus O’Mahony deserves great credit for exploring the ways in which western society has lost the ability to deal with death,” he added.

Dr O’Mahony will now go forward for possible selection as the Cork Person of the Year for 2016, the winner of which will be unveiled at a gala lunch awards ceremony on January 20 next in the Rochestown Park Hotel.