Course Structure - Year Two

What's Involved?

Practical methods, clinical skills, and the building blocks of professionalism are established to ensure patients receive a professional and thorough service. The importance of empathy and strong communication skills, not only with patients, but also with colleagues in the multidisciplinary team are a focal point.

Student Experience

Students are oriented to the hospital experience through simulation and shadowing under the supervision of clinicians for one full day a week on site at St James, Tallaght University and Naas Hospitals. Vital skills, such as history taking & case presentation, basic life support, and routine examinations and tests, are introduced and must be signed off in a logbook. Feedback takes place frequently throughout the clinical skills days and students are examined at the end of the year in an OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination) format, giving them a flavour of what it is like to work on a busy ward.

Good transitions from lectures to practising on each other to practising on a patient.

Ability to link in the value of histories and examinations to theoretical knowledge of bodies and diseases is very helpful.

The opportunity to go out on the wards and have a little patient contact is really beneficial and helps you prepare for third year such that it is not a completely new experience for us when we start the year.

What's Involved?

The nervous system is thematically taught, weaving the disciplines of anatomy, biochemistry, pharmacology & therapeutics, physiology and psychiatry together to understand its complexity from development to degeneration, as well as sensory, motor and regulatory systems. An effort is made to ensure the nervous system and its effects are studied from infancy to advanced age.

Student Experience

Lectures and practicals take place over a 6-week period and are supplemented by interactive workshops taught with a focus on specific clinical conditions, such as stroke, depression, and Alzheimer's disease. Educators contribute to research at both the Global Brain Health Institute and the Trinity College Institute for Neuroscience.

Clinical topics were very stimulating, interesting and will be useful in future.

The different aspects were integrated nicely.

What's Involved?

The fundamentals of biochemistry learned in Evolution and Life are concentrated on areas of clinical interest, such as, haematology, endocrinology, obesity, and diabetes. The structure of the extracellular matrix and its impact on tissue form and resiliency is considered and an understanding that alterations and diseases of these minute structures in the body can have a profound effect on health.

Student Experience

Lectures integrate learning on cellular metabolism and cell biology into the medical dimension of human physiology and pathology. Clinical and biochemical data are integrated into cases, illustrating how a diagnoses and treatment plan can be derived.

It was nice to be completely submersed in the discipline.

An enjoyable, challenging and worthwhile module.

What's Involved?

In order to support critical and intelligent insight into the science of drug use and abuse, this module familiarises students with the principles of the pharmacological basis of therapeutics. A research project with a principal investigator gives students a practical application of the scientific method and reasoning.

An understanding of how drugs are processed within the body to accurately predict drug responses and the effects on a patient from the cellular level up, in addition to learning the correct terminology to describe pharmacological principles and drug classification will cultivate an ability to treat patients and inform them of outcomes and alternatives.

Student Experience

Essential principles and terminology of autonomic, cardiovascular, endocrine, immune, gastro-intestinal and clinical pharmacologies, as well as toxicology, are delivered by lectures, case-based tutorials, laboratories and a light-hearted, but competitive table quiz, encouraging a comfortable proficiency on the topics discussed.

The 14-week research project provides an invaluable introduction to research. Students learn how to utilize laboratory, database and literature resources, while working with a leading researcher to design a study, generate and analyse data, evaluate and interpret statistical data and present it in a short paper and poster. The ability to work on their own, within a team and to be able to communicate research outputs strengthens the attributes of graduates from our programme.

Spiers is a great lecturer. He is interesting, engaging and his lecture slides give a really good base for further learning and study.

This module managed to teach almost the entirety of pharmacology and the main drugs of choice for most systems in a year. It was a lot of information, but the way the lectures highlighted aims and objectives, as well as being concise and focused on understanding mechanisms rather than memorising made it manageable.

The research project provided an insight into academic medicine and enabled students to gain experience in research which will aid in applications to research programs.

What's Involved?

The entire anatomy and development of the head and neck - from bones and joints to the organs of the special senses are the focus of this module. An ability to identify the major structures of the head and neck in an academic and clinical setting on CT scans, MR images, and x-rays will be gained, and students will be able to articulate the pathogenesis and natural history of common clinical disorders.

Student Experience

Lecture material is enhanced by practical sessions, utilising educator-led work stations where prosection, osteology and radiology convey entire anatomy of regions of the head and neck. Students are given an opportunity towards the end of each practical session to dissect.

Demonstrators are on hand to point out clinical scenarios for the specific areas.

The goals for each week were sent ahead of the practical, which allowed for preparation.

What's Involved?

Delivered for the first time in 2016/17, Infection and Immunity harmonises the subjects of immunology, microbiology and parasitology. Causes and mechanisms of disease, including pathogens, microbes, and parasites, as well as the immune systems role in managing, contributing to and/or treating infection are explored to enable students to understand how and why the immune system plays a central role in almost all areas of medicine.

Student Experience

The lecturers on this course have been long commended for their enthusiasm and knowledge, coupled with the use of interactive software, students find the lectures engaging. Lab practicals ensure students understand the principles of laboratory diagnosis, while acknowledging the strengths and limitations of such diagnoses.

What's Involved?

Molecular Mechanisms of Disease & Personalised Medicine reflects that through understanding the relationship between pathological and molecular basis of and processes in disease will enable a generation of graduates to improve diagnoses and therapies in cancer, cardiovascular, psychiatric and degenerative diseases.

Not only are principles of pathology, molecular and cellular biology imparted, but contemporary technologies and their application are discussed by leading researchers and educators in this area.

Student Experience

Students are immersed in these topics over a 6-week period after building a firm knowledge base in areas of biochemistry, physiology, anatomy, microbiology and immunology in previous studies. Lectures will focus on the scientific processes and then move onto focusing on specific pathologies. Case studies will be used. Textbooks and clinical and research publications will provide contemporary resources of study.