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Congratulations to Dr Laura Linehan on successfully defending her PhD thesis!
Congratulations to Dr Laura Linehan who successfully defended her PhD thesis titled “Infertility and recurrent miscarriage: An examination of pregnancy outcomes, services and patient experience” on Thursday, 30 May.
Laura’s PhD aimed to examine the dual experience of recurrent miscarriage and infertility and to add to the knowledge base on the current care issues, reproductive outcomes and lived experiences to inform improvements in care.
Dr Linehan has published four peer-reviewed journal articles to date from her PhD and has presented her research at a range of national and international conferences, with a forthcoming oral presentation at the ESHRE 40th Annual Meeting in Amsterdam. Laura was also lead developer of the first National Clinical Practice Guideline for Recurrent Miscarriage, published in January 2023. She has received several awards for her work, including poster prizes at the RCOG World Congress 2022, the Advances in Recurrent Pregnancy Loss and Extreme Pre-term Birth Conference, Belfast (2024), and the UCC College of Medicine and Health Bright Futures Pro-Am Three-Minute Thesis Trophy (2023).
During her PhD, Laura co-authored six peer-reviewed journal articles, as an active collaborator on the RE:CURRENT (Recurrent miscarriage: evaluating current services) and RELEVANT (Rethinking stillbirth through behaviour change interventions) projects. She also published the first paper documenting SARS-CoV-2 placentitis, as lead author, influencing national guidelines.
Laura has presented her PhD research at a range of study days/webinars, hosted by the Regional Centre for Nurse and Midwife Education HSE South-South East (2023); the Institute of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists-Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (2022); Ireland South Women and Infants Directorate Grand Rounds. She has facilitated perinatal bereavement care training (TEARDROP) workshops (2022-2023) and written articles for professional magazines, including the Irish College of General Practitioner’s Forum.
Dr Linehan’s PhD was supervised by Professor Keelin O’Donoghue and Marita Hennessy PhD. Her thesis was examined by Professor Richard Greene (Director of the National Perinatal Epidemiology Centre (NPEC) and Professor of Clinical Obstetrics in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at UCC) and Dr Cecilia Bottomley (Consultant Gynaecologist and Clinical Lead for Gynaecology Governance, University College London Hospitals).
Dr Linehan is senior (Year 5) Specialist Registrar in Higher Specialist Training in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, with a full-time clinical post at CUMH. In September, she commences a competitively awarded an ASPIRE RCPI Post-CSCST Fellowship through which she will further develop her clinical and research expertise, particularly around second trimester miscarriage.
Pictured L-R: Dr Cecilia Bottomley, Dr Laura Linehan and Professor Richard Greene