Mini Med Programme in TY - Deirdre O'Neill and Sophie Mortell

“At the start of the year we signed up for the MiniMed program and we began the course on the 28th of February. We all came together in the GPR and watched the course on our chrome books.   

On Monday we got a talk from a Cardiac Surgeon who told us about his life before college and his experience in RCSI. Following this we got a talk from a lung transport patient who suffered from cystic fibrosis for most of her life and how her life has improved dramatically since, this was a really inspirational talk and gave great insight into what it's like to recover from a transplant. 

On Tuesday Dr. Barry O’ Sullivan spoke about ‘‘What plastic surgery is'’, we got to see images of clients he has worked on such as someone who was in a motorbike accident. The patient's leg has been ripped open and the doctor had to use skin graft to cover up the bone, we got to see very graphic images on what he has done. Sadly we missed the real life c-section due to class photos. 

On Wednesday there was a talk on HPAT. He let us do some practise questions and also gave us websites to look at as well which were very beneficial for people thinking of doing the HPAT. We also got to see a Laparoscopic surgery which was a keyhole surgery removing someone's gallbladder due to them having gallstones which were causing pain for the patient.

On Thursday we started the pharmacy side of MiniMed, we got to hear about community, industry and hospital pharmacists. We also got to hear from a pharmacy student Sarah Larney who talked about what she's doing in pharmacy at the moment.

On Friday the physiotherapy side of the program was held, a nice part to end on. We got to see everything from A Day in A Life of A Physiotherapist to what’s involved in a course like physiotherapy. It was also really interesting to see the different lines of work you can go into from Sports Therapists to a regular physiotherapist. I didn’t realise how broad the course and line of work is. 

Overall it was a great experience and was very interesting especially for people who would have an interest in going into medicine as it gave an insight into what it would be like to work in different fields.”

By Deirdre O’ Neill and Sophie Mortell