Brian O’Brien is from Dublin and is a Consultant in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine, at Cork University Hospital, where he is Chairman of Department. He graduated from University College Dublin in Medicine, and with a Master’s degree in physiology. He completed training in anaesthesia and intensive care medicine in Ireland and in Melbourne. He is a Fellow of the College of Anaesthesiologists of Ireland (CAI), of the Joint Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine of Ireland, and of the College of Intensive Care Medicine of Australia and New Zealand. He has a wide ranging scope of clinical practice including cardiac and neuro-anaesthesia and preoperative assessment, as well as intensive care medicine. As a member of the Council at the CAI, he has served as Chairman of their Training Committee in recent years.

His areas of research interest include outcomes following intensive care admission, the management of overdoses and the perioperative management of rare diseases. He is also developing a longitudinal research study on predictors of outcomes in trainees on the CAI training program. Outside of medicine, he is interested in sports and music, and is a regular if not very fast cyclist and occasional triathlete, and an enthusiastic, if not talented, pianist. He also writes with great frequency to the Irish Times. He is married with two daughters.