Ted Buckley: “father of Irish neurosurgery” who trained many specialists at home and abroad

Ted Buckley was the fourth of nine siblings—six boys and three girls—and the first in his family to study medicine. He founded the first neurosurgery service in the south of Ireland and the country’s first neurosurgical training programme. This not only enabled Ireland to train its own neurosurgeons but also attracted many overseas trainees who went on to develop centres in their own countries. These included the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Jordan, and Pakistan.

Known as the father of Irish neurosurgery, the warm and unassuming Buckley worked at St Finbarr’s Hospital, Cork, and Cork University Hospital for almost 30 years—the first eight singlehandedly, with a gruelling one-in-one on-call rota. Previously, patients with serious head injuries were transported to Dublin, a 160 mile journey with potentially fatal treatment delays. Acutely aware of the need to avoid treatment hold ups in his own understaffed unit, the first thing Buckley taught juniors was how to perform burr holes, to buy time in emergencies when he was outside the hospital.

Such was his heavy workload that two full time consultant neurosurgeons replaced him when he retired in 2000. By 2021, when Cork University Hospital hosted an event …