TCD Wins the Intervarsity Medical Schools Gerontology Competition

Posted on: 20 April 2007

 TCD’s team of medical students won the Inaugural Jack Flanagan Competition, the first Intervarsity medical schools gerontology competition which was held on Thursday April 19th. The competition which has been named after Ireland’s first geriatrician. Dr Jack Flanagan was the first doctor in Ireland to specialise in caring for older people and pioneered modern day geriatric medicine. The competition is sponsored by the Dublin Ageing Research Network (DARN), which is one of the largest physician and psychiatry based research collaboration networks in Europe. It comprises geriatricians, neurologists, and old age psychiatrists based in all the Dublin teaching hospitals and medical schools.

The competition, which will be held each year, is an intervarsity contest between the penultimate medical years of the three Dublin medical schools.  This year, six teams took part , two from each of the medical schools. The TCD winners were:  Sinéad Cooney, Aisling McMahon,Úna Nic Ionmhain, Marie Oppeboen and Oleg Nerutsa.
The students were challenged on their knowledge of the medical and psychiatric problems associated with ageing. The winners were awarded the ‘Jack Flanagan Medal in Gerontology’, which is an academic prize awarded by the Professors of Gerontology/ Medicine in each University. A bursary award of €1,000 was also made to the winning team.

The competition took the form of a clinical-pathology conference where competitors were given a case to review and had 60 minutes to formulate a care plan and diagnosis for the patient.  The team captains were then called to present the teams’ findings to a three member-judging panel.

 Dr Jack Flanagan and his family attended the inaugural competition and were presented by the TCD Chair of Medical Gerontology, Professor Davis Coakley with a medal in recognition of his tremendous influence on the development of geriatric medicine in Ireland.