Spotlight On: Seamus Hoey
I was born and raised in County Louth and I've wanted to be a vet since I was 8 years old. I spent every summer with the local vet and despite their best efforts to dissuade me, I followed my plan and obtained a place on the Veterinary Medicine programme in UCD.
I loved my time as an undergraduate student in UCD, spending summers raising yearlings on a Stud farm in Kentucky, helping a farmer in Cork during lambing season, translating for English vets at the yearling sales in France, working in charity small animal practice in England and seeing all the possibilities that a degree in Veterinary Medicine can give.
After graduating in 2007, my plan was to prepare myself for mixed practice in north Louth. I wanted to be a better prepared equine vet, so I undertook an internship in Goulburn Valley Equine Hospital, in Shepparton, Victoria, Australia. I really loved my time working there with mostly Standardbred horses. There my love of Radiology was kindled. I enjoyed the puzzle solving of imaging, where we use the information from the owner, physical examination and the images to narrow down our list of differentials to ultimately improve the outcome for the animal and the owner.
After my internship, I was advised to go into small animal practice to be better prepared for a Radiology Residency, and so I spent 2 years at Bundoora Veterinary Hospital, a referral hospital in Melbourne. I spent 2 months interviewing at Universities in North America that would allow me to keep my mixed practice interests and was lucky to be offered a position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
I spent the next 4 years in Madison working and learning about small animal, exotic, equine, bovine and camelid imaging. I sat and passed 4 board examinations becoming a European and American Specialist in Radiology. My residency projects varied from documenting the radiographic development of the long bones in calves; the gastrointestinal anatomy of dogs using CT; to tracheobronchial prolapse in a leopard gecko. I really enjoyed the variability of my experiences.
In 2014, I completed my programme and took up a position at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. There I maintained my “jack of all trades” skills in large animal, small animal and exotic imaging. I really enjoyed helping to train the residents in large and small animal radiology, facilitating orthopaedic research in horses, dogs and cats using CT and MRI. In Switzerland, a lot of farmers insure their cattle and so you may see cattle being airlifted from the mountain via helicopter before being brought to the Zurich Vet School for advanced imaging. The University also runs the veterinary team at the Zurich Zoo. The experiences were great and helped to improve my skills in all the species.
In 2016, I returned to Ireland and UCD as an Assistant Professor in Veterinary Diagnostic Imaging. I really enjoy working in UCD because of the students, interns and residents. I love seeing the moment where a student understands a concept that will help them in the future to be more confident in their work. UCD is great at allowing clinician academics to follow their research paths. In Diagnostic Imaging, we are at the crossroads of the hospital and are thus involved in the workup of all species as well as the research projects of a lot of our colleagues in other sections, departments and institutions.
Recently, I’ve also obtained funding for teaching exchanges between the veterinary schools in UCD and the University of Namibia. I undertook further specialisation in 2022 to become an American Specialist in Equine Imaging, and in 2024, thanks to colleagues in UCD, Clinic na gCapall, the Irish Equine Centre and the University of Montreal, I obtained my PhD on imaging developmental disease in developing horses, showing that ultrasound can be used in the field to screen these diseases.
At the moment, I am Programme Director for the European and American specialisation programmes in Imaging in UCD. I help the doctoral students in preparing for their examinations and their research programmes. I like the collegiate nature of the research that we do in UCD, both within the Veterinary School, within UCD (for example, with my own research with the UCD School of Computer Science) or internationally with veterinary schools in Europe and North America. I am also a board member of VIVA, Volunteers in Veterinary Assistance where we work with small-scale livestock farmers in the developing world to improve livestock husbandry, health and welfare.
Outside of work, I enjoy running half marathons and marathons. It’s a great way to clear the mind. After my veterinary career taking me around the world, I enjoy travelling, especially slow travelling by boat and train around Europe. I think that I am very lucky to be a vet, to have the diverse opportunities inherent within the profession, to do research that may help an animal and their owner, and to be able to engage with my colleagues as they train for their career.