My name is Linda Murphy and I am a TY student in Coláiste an Átha. On the week of the 20th to 23rd of February I completed the RCSI Mini Med programme. This course is intended to give TY students the chance to explore the option of pursuing a career in Healthcare. It provides a wide variety of topics such as psychiatry, surgery, emergency medicine, paediatrics and many more aspects of medicine. From a young age I have been interested in taking care of people so when the opportunity for me to complete this programme came up I jumped at the chance! Obviously, I was anxious about going down to a new place but it really helped me with my confidence.
On Tuesday 20th, we were in the University Hospital Waterford, HSE/RCSI Education facility for a full day of lectures. The topics we covered on this day were Human Anatomy, Emergency Medicine, Psychiatry, ophthalmology, Orthopaedics, Dermatology and Cardiology.
On Wednesday 21st and Thursday 22nd, we were in the Waterford Institute of Technology, Health Science Building. I really loved being in the college. Thursday was my favourite of all the days. In the morning time we got lectures in the college and after lunch we completed practical sessions, where there was a lot of hands on work. The topics we covered in the lectures on the two days were nutrition, Oncology, Nephrology, Neurology, Otolaryngology, Paediatrics, Urology, Clinical Microbiology and ageing. For the practical sessions we were split into six groups, I was part of the purple team. We had six sessions split up between the two days. They covered First aid, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Simulation and Surgical Discipline, CPR, Research/Clinical Scenarios and finally Simulation and Clinical Skills. Simulation and Clinical Skills was my favourite part of the practical sessions. Some of the activities included taking blood pressure, using stethoscopes to listen to a manikin’s heartbeat and my favourite of all of them taking blood from a manikin’s arm.
The Final day of the course was another day full of lectures in the University Hospital. The topics we covered were Radiology, Surgery, Respiratory, General and Specialist surgeon, General Practice and Student/Junior Doctor experience. My favourites from throughout the week were Psychiatry, Paediatrics and Oncology. After completing this week, I am quite certain that I would like to pursue a career in healthcare.
All in all, this week was an amazing experience and I recommend anyone that does TY and is thinking of pursuing a career in Healthcare should put their name down for this programme. The whole week not only gave me an insight into the life of a medical career it gave me the motivation to get my head down in 5th and 6th year so that I can hopefully do the course that I plan to do when I move on to College!