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Where should I study health sciences?
John Holden and Louise Holden
Mon, Jan 6, 2014
Students interested in health could find themselves flung to all corners of Ireland to study, whether it’s nursing in St Angela’s College in Sligo, physiotherapy in the University of Limerick or dentistry in UCC.
Trinity, UCC, UCD and NUI Galway all have medical schools, and there are dental schools in Trinity and UCC. Nursing is available in 13 institutions including IoTs.
The Royal College of Surgeons is a one-stop-shop for health sciences; with around 1,500 students, RCSI has courses in medicine, physiotherapy and pharmacy, and well as post-graduate nursing and dentistry. There’s a mix of nationalities and plenty of social events such as gig nights and community outreach.
Potential med students might be interested in the RCSI Aim High Medicine scholarship which is offered to a school leaver who excels academically, is passionate about medicine and who would otherwise be unable to attend third-level education due to financial constraints. RCSI offers five- and six-year courses – some students may be exempt from the foundation year, based on their academic subjects or grades.
Medicine at UCD is a six-year course with the first year focused on basic sciences and ethical, societal and technological issues in the practice of medicine. Students can also take optional modules from across the university in any subject.
Studying medicine at UCD has the benefit of a huge campus and thousands of other students from a range of disciplines. The university has considerable form in health sciences research, which feeds into the undergraduate experience. Health research strengths at UCD include child health, translational oncology, fibrosis and psychiatry and mental health.
The main hospitals associated with the UCD programme are St Vincent’s and the Mater Misericordiae. There are a further 20 training hospitals and 100 primary care practices where UCD med students learn, and plenty of international placement opportunities too.
Trinity College medical school also runs a six-year programme starting with courses in human development, behavioural sciences and ethics.
The Trinity curriculum is a “spiral model” with progressive complexity at each phase of the curriculum and a component of professional development, clinical and biomedical sciences in each year.
TCD has training centres in Adelaide and Meath Hospital (incorporating the National Children’s Hospital in Tallaght), St James’s Hospital, Naas and Kilkenny, among others. Trinity College itself has great resources and specialisms in key health-related research such as genetics, immunology and cancer.
NUI Galway’s School of Medicine is conveniently collocated with the University College Hospital, the major teaching hospital for the six-year programme.
The university has a well-funded programme of medical research and a new curriculum. There’s been a lot of investment in the university in recent years, thanks to vigorous fund-raising, and an extensive building programme is underway to accommodate new programmes and expanding enrolments.
The medical school has also benefitted from the establishment of the the Regenerative Medicine Institute (Remedi), established in 2004. The institute, which specialises in gene therapy and stem-cell research, has 70 researchers working on immunology, genomics and proteomics, preclinical models of cardiovascular arthritic diseases, a toxicology core, GMP cell and vector facility and an ethics and outreach programme.
There’s a wide range of study centres for nursing, including six universities, seven IoTs and St Angela’s College, Sligo.
While all the institutions offer the general nursing degree, some offer subject specific options. For example, Athlone IT has a degree in Psychiatric Nursing, while DCU offers the integrated Children and General Nursing degree, as well as Intellectual Disability and Psychiatric Nursing.
Dundalk IT has courses in Intellectual Disability, Psychiatric and Midwifery. There are also nursing departments in Galway Mayo IT, IT Tralee, Letterkenny IT, NUI Galway, St Angela’s College, Trinity College Dublin, UCC, UCD, University of Limerick and Waterford IT.
UCD is the home of veterinary studies in Ireland – the five-year veterinary science degree and the four-year veterinary nursing degree are highly sought after as no other university has a veterinary school. As a result, many Irish students leave to study veterinary science in European universities.
However, there are other options if you want to study animal health – veterinary nursing is available in Athlone, Dundalk and Letterkenny IoTs and a number of further education colleges also offer veterinary related programmes.
UCD is also the highest profile physiotherapy educator at third level. However, there is more choice in the field, with undergraduate physiotherapy programmes in Trinity College, University of Limerick and the Royal College of Surgeons.
Physiotherapy is another high-points field that has seen many Irish students travel abroad since English language degree programmes became more common across Europe.
Trinity’s School of Pharmacology is probably the best known provider of pharmacy education but it is only one of three third-level colleges accredited by the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland, along with the Royal College of Surgeons and University College Cork.
There are pharmacy technician courses at a number of IoTs including Carlow and Athlone.