Mary-Anne Ryan

A picture of Mary Anne Ryan

PhD Student

Contact Details:

Email: maryanne.ryan@ucc.ie

Mary joined INFANT team in September 2016. She is a registered general nurse with specialist registration in paediatrics and midwifery. On completion of her registration, she spent seven years in Australia, working in a wide variety of clinical settings and also in the area of education.

This included course development and clinical support for paediatric nursing students in the University of New South Wales. Once back in Ireland, she returned to clinical practice and further education.

Mary Anne’s research participation and interests are varied and  include clinical trials conducted in the neonatal unit in CUMH such as the Aerosurf study, double-blinded randomised controlled trial and the Petite study (a multicentre pen label single-arm study to evaluate the Pharmacokinetics, Efficacy and safety of Brivaracetam in neonates with repeated electroencephalographic seizures), electroencephalogram monitoring in hypoxic-ischaemic infants infants (ANSeR study), sleep in the preterm infant as monitored through EEG (SLEEPi study), and developmental outcome of mid to late preterm infants.

Mary Anne was also involved in research studies in conjunction with industry partners such as the NeoView study (exploring technologies which will give parents remote access to neonatal units) and the current Digest study (a study of gastric digestion and the development of a laboratory-based model to predict how food is digested).

Career Profile

  • 2017-Present Registered PhD student, INFANT, UCC
  • 2016-Present Research Support Officer, INFANT, UCC
  • 2016 An Introduction to the Ethics of Health Research, UCC
  • 2015 Nursing Management of Neonate UCC/CUMH
  • 2013-2015 MSc Health Care Ethics and Law, RCSI
  • 2007-2016 Midwife/ Neonatal nurse, Neonatal Unit, CUMH
  • 2002-2007 Practice Midwife, Private obstetric and Gynae practice, Cork Clinic
  • 2001-2001 MComm (Public Administration), Department of Government, UCC
  • 1996 – 1999 BSc Nursing (Hons) Dept of Nursing UCC
  • 1989 – 1993 Medical, surgical, midwifery, paediatric and neonatal clinical practice
  • 1988-1989 Registration in Midwifery, Australia
  • 1982-1986 Nurse registration; Integrated General and Paediatric Nursing (Hons.)

Professional Activities

1. Publications

  • Ryan MA. (2017). Advocacy: Defacto partner to neonatal nursing practice. Journal of Neonatal Nursing23(1);5-8.
  • Ryan MA., Ryan CA., Dempsey E. (2017) Consent for routine neonatal procedures in Irish neonatal units. How do we compare with BAPM guidelines? Irish Medical Journal, Jun 9;110(6):584
  • Ryan, M. A., Mathieson, S., Dempsey, E. & Boylan, G. An Introduction to Neonatal EEG. J Perinat Neonatal Nurs 35, 369-376 (2021). https://doi.org:10.1097/jpn.0000000000000599
  • Ryan, M. A. et al. Nocturnal sleep architecture of preterm infants in the NICU. Infant 16 (2020).
  • Ryan, M. A. et al. Sleep state organisation of moderate to late preterm infants in the neonatal unit. Pediatr Res (2022). https://doi.org:10.1038/s41390-022-02319-x
  • Wei, S. Ventura, M. A. Ryan, S. Mathieson, G. B. Boylan, M. Lowery, et al. Deep-spindle: An automated sleep spindle detection system for analysis of infant sleep spindles. Computers in Biology and Medicine 2022 Vol. 150 Pages 106096. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compbiomed.2022.106096
  • Ventura, S. R. Mathieson, J. M. O’Toole, V. Livingstone, M.-A. Ryan and G. B. Boylan.Electroencephalographic sleep macrostructure and sleep spindles in early infancy. Sleep 45 (2021). https://doi.org:10.1093/sleep/zsab262
  • Aisling A. GarveyJohn M. O’TooleVicki LivingstoneBrian WalshMichael MooreAndreea    PavelLavinia PanaiteMary Anne RyanGeraldine B. BoylanDeirdre M. MurrayEugene M. Dempsey. Evolution of early cerebral NIRS in hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy. Acta Paediatrica 111, 1870-1877 (2022). https://doi.org:https://doi.org/10.1111/apa.16493
  • Smith V, Delaney H, Hunter A, Torgerson D, Treweek S, Gamble C, Mills M, Stanbury K, Dempsey E, Daly M, O’Shea J, Weatherup K, Deshpande S, Ryan MA, Lowe J, Black G, Devane D. Training trial recruiters: an educational and training intervention for recruiters to neonatal trials. Final report. Health Research Board Trials Methodology Research Network (HRB-TMRN), University of Galway and Trinity College Dublin: Oct 2022.
  • ER de Groot, MA Ryan, C Sam, O Verschuren, T Alderliesten T, J Dudink , A van den Hoogen. Evaluation of Sleep Practices and Knowledge in Neonatal Healthcare Advances in Neonatal Care, August 2023 DOI: 10.1097/ANC.00000000001102

2. Presentations:

  • Paediatric Academic Society (PAS), Baltimore 2017. Consent for routine neonatal procedures in Irish neonatal units and how we compare with BAPM guidelines (poster presentation)
  • Irish Research Nurses Network (IRNN), Galway 2017. Procedural consent in Irish neonatal units (oral presentation)
  • Congress of Joint European neonatal societies (JENS) Maastricht 2019 –Sleep wake cycling in the mid to late preterm infant in the neonatal unit (oral presentation).
  • European Academy of Paediatric Societies(EAPS 2020 Virtual). Sleep architecture of Moderate to Late Preterm infants over a 12-hour period in the NICU(Oral Presentation)
  • Joint European Neonatal Society (JENS 2021) Sleep in the NICU(e-Poster)
  • Irish Neonatal Research Symposium Nov 2021. EEG Sleep analysis of the Preterm Infant in the neonatal unit (Best poster award)
  • European Academy of Paediatric Societies(EAPS Barcelona 2022,). Developmental outcome of a healthy moderate to late preterm infant group versus a term born infant group(Oral Presentation)
  • Australia New Zealand Brain Club(ABC, Melbourne 2023) Electrographic monitoring for seizure detection in the NICU, current practices and Future direction ( Oral presentation made by Atul Malhotra on my behalf)