Events

Dr Heather Hanna is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist in Intellectual Disability. She is the clinical lead for a CAMHS team for children and young people with intellectual disability, based in Northern Ireland. Heather, and several of the team, are trained sleep counsellors. The team offers sleep assessments and behavioural sleep interventions, as well as sometimes using medications to help sleep.

Heather was awarded UK Psychiatrist of the Year in 2018, by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. She is the current Chair of the Intellectual Disability Faculty of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Northern Ireland and Vice-Chair of the Child and Adolescent Intellectual Disability Psychiatry Network, which has members in the UK, Ireland and around the world.

Heather has interests in service development, restraint reduction and improving outcomes for children and young people with intellectual disability.

Dr Dara O’Donoghue is a Consultant Respiratory Paediatrician at the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children and Senior Clinical Lecturer at Queens University Belfast. He completed his training in the UK and Australia including a Fellowship in Paediatric Sleep Medicine in Melbourne from 2006-2008. He leads the Regional Northern Ireland Paediatric Sleep Medicine Service.

Barbara qualified as a RGN in 1991, then as a RSCN in 1994 following training at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.

Since 1996 Barbara has specialised in the field of paediatric respiratory medicine while working at the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children.

In 2010 Barbara took up her role as paediatric respiratory nurse. It is a regional role where Barbara co-ordinates and cares for children with complex respiratory/sleep conditions e.g. children who require ventilatory support at home (BiPAP/CPAP), children who require a tracheostomy tube to maintain a safe airway, sleep disorders such as obstructive sleep apnoea, narcolepsy and cataplexy as well as difficult-to-treat asthma and children who require home oxygen.

Barbara qualified as a non-medical prescriber from Queens University Belfast in 2018 which enables her to work as an independent practitioner within her scope of practice as per NMC guidelines.