Intro
Clinical years in Irish Medical Schools usually begin during the second semester of their third year of medical education. During the clinical phase, students are not only required to attend regular lectures held throughout the semester, but also to attend clinical learning along with a team of doctors: consultants, specialist registrars, senior registrar, registrar, senior house officers and interns. They would not only learn about bedside mannerism, investigations done in clinical settings to manage various health conditions and management of diseases based on the team’s specialty that the students are attached to.
How students are assigned to teams
- In order to maximise every student’s learning opportunity, students are broken up into small groups, some may even get to attach to one team all by themselves. As a result, some hospitals may not be able to accomodate this arrangement as they may not have as many teams as the students.
- You will be randomly assigned to a specialty for a number of weeks where you will experience their work and understand the patients they see.
- Depending on your university, you will have the opportunity to learn in many other hospitals around Ireland. This allows you to learn from a variety of mentors and see regional differences in practicing medicine.
- Another advantage of this attachment is that some hospitals are more specialised in a certain specialty and through placement in other hospitals allow students to have better learning opportunities regarding the specialty.
- Apart from hospital placements, students who are attending their General Practice module will also require to travel to various part of the county, or even cross, county to attach to their assigned GP tutor
Conclusion
- Being placed in a different hospital has been advantageous to students’ learning experience as they can experience different hospital cultures, understand the different hospital guidelines and also meet different doctors throughout their medical studies as an undergraduate.
- It also provide students a greater learning opportunity in the specialty that they are interested in and all the relevant advancement of the field in specialised hospitals