UCD medical students rotate across multiple Dublin teaching hospitals. This thread covers which hospitals are affiliated, what specialties are strongest at each, how rotation placements work, and what the quality of clinical supervision is like compared to TCD’s clinical sites.
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okay so one thing that threw me when i started at UCD is that the Belfield campus where you do your pre-clinical stuff is basically completely separate from where your clinical training happens. I knew this going in but the reality of it takes some adjustment. wanted to start a thread where people can share which hospitals they’ve been to, what the supervision was like, and what specialties each site is best for because the information online is pretty vague about the specifics
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the main affiliated hospitals are St Vincent’s University Hospital, Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital Crumlin, the National Maternity Hospital at Holles Street, Beaumont Hospital, and St Michael’s Hospital in Dun Laoghaire among others. St Vincent’s is probably the one UCD students spend the most time at and it’s considered the flagship teaching hospital for UCD. it’s directly affiliated and has a strong research culture which flows into the clinical teaching. the consultants there are generally very engaged with students because teaching is built into their role in a more formal way than at some of the other sites
did all my clinical years at UCD and now doing intern year. want to give an honest overview. the quality of supervision varies a lot depending on which hospital and honestly which firm you get assigned to within that hospital. St Vincent’s was consistently good in my experience, the registrars and consultants knew students were coming and had tutorials scheduled. Beaumont was strong for neurology and neurosurgery which makes sense given it’s the national centre for those specialties. the Mater was good for general medicine and had a great infectious disease team. where things got patchier for me was some of the smaller affiliated sites where student teaching felt more like an afterthought
i just finished my first clinical rotation block and the thing nobody tells you enough about is the travel. depending on where you’re placed you could be commuting across Dublin from one hospital to another across different rotation blocks and Dublin traffic is not your friend. some people end up moving closer to whichever hospital they’re at for a block which sounds extreme but after a few weeks of early morning commutes you start to understand why people do it. the university doesn’t provide accommodation near clinical sites so you’re figuring that out yourself