Fintan Sheerin

Biography

Dr. Sheerin is registered on the General and Intellectual Disability Divisions of the Nursing Register. He has extensive experience of nursing across a number of fields of practice, including behavioural intellectual disability, spinal cord injury, urology and orthopaedics. He was a recipient of an All-Ireland Nursing Research Fellowship in 1999, under which he undertook his PhD. This work uniquely brought together nursing informatics and intellectual disability nursing in an attempt to delineate the core interventional components of specialist intellectual disability nursing. His research has largely focused on mental well-being and has sought to address the issues which impact such well-being: human rights; parenting; sexuality; parenting etc. He is leading the mental health component of the IDS-TILDA research project and will be guiding the analysis of data gathered to date and exploring the future focus of data in that regard. The above research focus has also found resonance in his contribution to society which has seen him lead the development of a national group focused on the human rights of persons with intellectual disabilities in Ireland, bringing together many local and national groups as well as many individuals with and without intellectual disabilities. Dr. Sheerin was the Expert Consultant to the RTE Investigations Unit documentary, 'Inside Bungalow 3', which exposed significant concerns regarding service provision to people with an intellectual disability in an Irish service setting, and which led to criminal prosecutions. He has also been a contributor on such issues to print and visual media.He is an affiliated academic of Trinity College Dublin Centre for Global Health and of the Trinity International Development Initiative and has also led health teams, both in a voluntary capacity and as part of his civic engagement role, to refugee camps across Europe (Calais and Lesbos). He was a Director of Transformative Praxis Malawi (TPM) and Coordinator for its health and well-being initiative. TPM is a critical pedagogical initiative of Bishops University, Quebec, which engages in participatory action research with with rural communities in Malawi. He worked to ensure that all aspects of the project were inclusive of human diversity, and lead to general well-being. Administratively, Dr. Sheerin has been Director of PG Teaching and Learning in the School of Nursing and Midwifery and has acted up for Head of School on a number of occasions. He was Acting Director of the National Institute for Intellectual Disability and was instrumental in setting the NIID on a new direction.He was a non-executive director of Sunbeam House Services Ltd. in Bray from 2015-2016. His contribution to profession and education has seen him taking on external examiner roles in nursing and social care programmes at Athlone Institute of Technology, Dundalk Institute of Technology and University of Leeds. He is currently an external PhD supervisor a student at University of Bath. He has coordinated modules and courses at undergraduate and graduate levels and has extensive experience supervising students at master and doctoral levels. He is a Fellow of the European Academy of Nursing Sciences and President of the Association for Common European Nursing Diagnoses, Interventions and Outcomes and has been a central figure in that association's development over the past 14 years. He is also active in NANDA-International, and was awarded a Fellowship of NANDA-International in 2016.

Research Interest

Dr. Sheerin's principal areas of research relate to the rights of people of human diversity within both Irish and global health context (e.g. NDA Mothers with Disabilities study, Transformative Praxis Malawi studies, GENIO's Towards a Full Life). He has worked on the two most recent Irish studies into LGBTI issues (Visible Lives and LGBTIreland). He is also interested in professional development and has been co-PI on the HSE-funded project, Shaping the Future of Intellectual Disability Nursing in Ireland as well as the SCAPE study into specialist and advanced nursing/midwifery practice. He is currently leading the mental health component of the IDS TILDA study with a view to exploring how mental health and well-being are impacted by various predictive indicators.