Ms. Ruth Delaney is a consultant orthopaedic surgeon and shoulder specialist. Ms. Delaney specializes in the full range of shoulder surgery, including open and arthroscopic procedures.

Her subspecialist areas of interest include shoulder instability and shoulder replacement surgery. She also maintains an active academic role, teaching visiting fellows and medical students on elective rotations, as well as teaching shoulder courses internationally, and is a reviewer for the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery. Ms. Delaney founded the Irish Shoulder Fellowship programme, which began taking international fellows in 2018.

After spending her initial postgraduate years in Cork, Ms. Delaney joined the Harvard Combined Orthopaedic Residency Program, where she underwent a comprehensive training in all aspects of orthopaedic surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and the other Harvard-affiliated hospitals.

During her time in Boston, Ms. Delaney had the opportunity to complement her Masters degree in sports and exercise medicine with direct experience of professional sports teams such as the New England Patriots and the Boston Red Sox. She maintains her interest in care of athletes and sports injuries as a Fellow of the Faculty of Sports and Exercise Medicine in Ireland and as shoulder consultant to Munster Rugby.

Shortly before the end of her orthopaedic training, Ms. Delaney was a chief resident on the orthopaedic trauma service at the time of thetragic events of the 2013 Boston marathon bombings. In 2014, she ran the Boston marathon to honour the victims and her patients, as well as to raise money for the MGH emergency response fund.

Following general orthopaedic training, Ms. Delaney completed her specialist shoulder training at the Harvard Shoulder Fellowship in Boston as well as in France, under the guidance of Drs. JP Warner, Gilles Walch and Laurent Lafosse. This international training afforded her opportunities to work with world-class surgeons at the top of their field in areas such as shoulder replacement, instability surgery and complex arthroscopic surgery.

Ms. Delaney is an active researcher, and in 2014 won the premier research award in shoulder surgery, the Neer Award, for work on shoulder instability surgery.

In 2015, Ms. Delaney was invited to become a reviewer for the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery, the leading journal worldwide for specialist shoulder surgery. In October 2016, she was admitted as a member of the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons, the foremost shoulder surgery organisation in the world.

Ms. Delaney became an Assistant Clinical Professor at University College Dublin in 2017 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2020.

In 2018, Ms. Delaney founded the Dublin Shoulder Institute.

In 2020, Ms. Delaney was appointed an Associate Editor for the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery – Seminars in Arthroplasty. As of January 2021, she also serves on the International Advisory Board of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. She has also been appointed Deputy Editor, Research, Shoulder & Elbow of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (JAAOS) in 2021.

She is regularly invited to teach and lecture at shoulder courses and conferences all over the world.

Having represented Munster in four different sports and played tennis at international level, Ruth has a personal understanding of athletes and people who wish to stay active at all levels, and she brings this perspective to her treatment of patients with shoulder problems.

Procedures that Ms. Delaney commonly performs include:
• Arthroscopic (keyhole) surgery
• Rotator cuff repair
• Shoulder stabilization/labral repair (Bankart procedure)
• Coracoid transfer procedure (Latarjet procedure)
• Shoulder replacement surgery
• Reverse shoulder replacement surgery