A trained nurse found her calling in complementary medicine and is now running her own company. Michelle McDonaghreports on an alternative life
One of the most important specifications of any job for Ruth Cloherty is that it allows her to work at home around her children as much as possible.
She is a strong believer in the importance of the mother being at home, particularly in the early years, in terms of the development of healthy and happy children.
Since Cloherty set up her own company, the Institute of Complementary and Integrated Medicine, in 2004, not only has she been able to work largely from home, but her husband, James, has also become a full-time director with the company.
Although British-born Cloherty originally trained as a nurse, she took a long, roundabout course back into the area of health.
"My father, Dr Lawrence Nightingale Owen, worked for the university in Cambridge in research and is regarded as the grandfather of oncology in the veterinary field.
"During the summer months, he used to take locums for other vets and I would go with him. I remember injecting 40 piglets with iron one day and seeing my father put his arm right up inside a cow with a prolapsed womb. I also helped him get prescriptions ready for the small animal practice. I loved it," she recalls.
Despite thoroughly enjoying her three- year training as a nurse, only three months into her job as a staff nurse, Cloherty decided it was not the career for her.
"I just couldn't see a way that I could make a real difference through nursing. I was already thinking, even at that stage, that preventative medicine must be better. I couldn't understand why more resources were not put into this area instead of waiting until people were such a mess that they ended up in hospital."
Cloherty joined a telephone marketing company in London and was quickly promoted to account manager. She got married in 1989 and when her daughter, Sophie, was born the following year, she gave up work to be a full-time mother, a job she really loved.
Her difficult first marriage in 1996 ended when her second daughter, Jessica, was about three years old. Having to go back to work for financial reasons, she was offered a job as a recruitment consultant in the IT and telecoms industry which was booming at the time. After a year, she transferred to another company in the same industry but had to take time off work when she was struck down with chronic fatigue syndrome.
"I went to Dingle to swim with Fungi, the dolphin, and as soon as I set foot on Irish ground at Cork airport, I felt a tangible feeling of coming home although I had no family in Ireland. I hired a car and drove around the country and decided that I was going to move there with the kids."
Shortly after her trip to Ireland, Cloherty met her second husband, James, a Scotsman with Irish roots, through work. The couple moved to Ireland in November 1999 with the kids, their hamsters and goldfish. As James's grandfather was from Cleggan, they decided to move to Galway, buying a house near the lake in Loughrea.
The couple had two more children together and when James gave up his full-time job to project manage the building of their new house, Cloherty decided it was time for her to get some part-time work.
She answered an ad in a local paper looking for a director of studies for a course provider in naturopathic medicine.
She began working 10 hours a week looking after students in Cork, Galway and Dublin, but quickly became full-time and was made director of registration for the business.
When her contract was not renewed with the course provider, Cloherty, who had by then studied naturopathy and acupuncture, decided to take the plunge and set up her own company. Her Institute of Complementary and Integrated Medicine offers courses in Galway, Dublin and Cork in acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, Tuina massage and t'ai chi.
"James was in charge of IT and I was in charge of sales and marketing. I recruited a course director, Suzanne Laurie, who is registered with the British Association of Nutritional Therapists and specialists in each area, most of whom are from the UK with university teaching experience.
"There is no accreditation in Ireland for such courses, but there are standards in the UK and I had my courses written and material prepared to meet those standards," she explains.
In the medium to long term, Cloherty believes alternative therapies such as acupuncture and Chinese medicine will become part of the mainstream health system here, similar to the UK where NHS acupuncture clinics are proving effective.
To those who would say that alternative and complementary medicine is a load of codswallop and offers false hope to patients who would do anything to find a cure, Cloherty agrees that historically the alleged benefits of such therapies were anecdotal as there was no research being done in the area: "In any industry, unfortunately, you will get charlatans, but you will get really good people too.
"There's a lot of money going into research in Chinese medicine, acupuncture and nutritional supplements at the moment which is showing scientific proof of their benefits."
I just couldn't see a way that I could make a real difference through nursing. I was already thinking, even at that stage, that preventative medicine must be better