North Dublin City GP Training Programme: Brief Prospectus 2011
Northside GP Training Programme: Brief Prospectus 2011
Catherine McAuley Centre, Nelson Street, Dublin 7
Tel: +353 (01) 716 4505
Email: northdublincitygp@ucd.ie
Open Evening
Our open evening will take place on Thursday, 15 December at 7.30pm at the Catherine McAuley Centre, Nelson Street, Dublin 7.
Interview Dates
Friday, 17 February 2012
Thursday, 1 March 2012 (panel interview)
The selection process will take into account the past educational and social accomplishments of trainees, and their individual experiences and involvements. The interview process will comprise of two interviews (format to be confirmed). Depending on the number of applications, we will reduce the number of interviewees based on the candidate's preference of scheme and curriculum vitae.
About the Programme
The North Dublin Inner City Specialist Training Programme in General Practice (in association with RCSI/Dublin North East General Practice Training Programme and Catherine McAuley Research and Education Centre) was established in 2010. It offers four years of structured training in general practice.
Vision, Mission and Ethos of the North Dublin General Practice Training Programme
Vision
That every person and community has access to a professional and quality general practitioner service that will allow them to maximise their health irrespective of background and economic status.
Mission
To form professional and high quality general practitioners whose passion is to maximise patient and community health and whose own health is maximised through the ability to self-care. To produce/be general practitioners who are committed to making a difference to the health of patients and communities in areas of deprivation, and hard to reach groups.
Ethos
The North Dublin General Practitioner Training Scheme staff, trainees, general practitioner and hospital trainers comprise a professional body committed to providing the highest quality healthcare and ensuring all primary care services are fully accessible to all patients irrespective of background. The scheme promotes the following values:
Social Inclusion
This involves actively promoting access for all patients into our surgeries and demonstrating fidelity to all patients irrespective of background. It also includes providing all primary care services relevant to the health needs of our practice populations including services for drug users, homeless people, new communities and the travelling community.
Advocacy
We base our practice on the evidence base that health is socially determined. To address the early death and illness burden in our patients, our training programme will advocate with vigour on behalf of those patients affected by social inequality.
Commitment to excellence
We recognise the importance of basing our clinical decisions about our patients on the best available current evidence. We value learning as a process that we engage with throughout our medical career. We have a holistic educational philosophy that promotes the development of clinical skills, knowledge and effective communication skills, and personal and professional development.
Respect and Honesty
We respect and esteem ourselves, our patients and our colleagues. This involves taking feelings, needs, thoughts, ideas, wishes and preferences into consideration. It means taking all of these seriously and giving them worth and value.
Accountability and Responsibility
We can be relied upon to do our utmost on behalf of our patients and to fulfil our promises. We are industrious and work hard on behalf of our patients. We fulfil our responsibilities fully to our patients, staff and colleagues.
How the Programme Works
This new programme commenced in July 2010. It offers 12 GP training places per year. It is based in the Catherine McAuley Research and Education Centre, Mater Hospital, Dublin 7
The programme directing team consists initially of Dr Austin O'Carroll, Dr Neasa McDonagh, Dr Cathy Cullen and Dr Ming Rawat. They have diverse small group expertise and are passionate about providing an education that promotes the development of professional, ethical and caring general practitioners. They hope to help trainees develop into GPs who will provide quality, evidence-based healthcare; who will enjoy and hopefully love their work; who will know how to advocate for their patients and who will understand the importance of providing healthcare for both individual patients and the community within which they are located.
About the Programme Directing Team
Dr Austin O Carroll MICGP
Dr Austin O'Carroll is a UCD graduate of 1988 and trained on the Dublin training scheme.
He works as an inner city GP and has a specialist interest in working with hard to reach groups. He is founder of Safetynet Network of Specialised Services for Homeless People which provides primary care services to homeless people in eight different hostels/homeless services. He has helped develop a specialised methadone maintenance programme for homeless people, and has founded and developed an outreach bus to deliver healthcare to homeless people. He has also worked with new communities and has received an award from the African Refugee Network for this work.
He is a founding member of DDoc out of hours services. He is currently doing a doctoral research programme. He is also a trained relationship counsellor. He has an interest in research, in particular, qualitative research. He is currently doing a professional doctorate in health in Bath University.
He has worked at undergraduate teaching since 1991, was a Continuing Medical Education tutor for five years and has worked in GP training since 2000. He has specialised in teaching personal development, communication skills (and is one of the few trained teachers of Calgary Communication Skills), professionalism and health inequalities/social medicine.
Dr Ming Rawat MICGP
Dr Ming Rawat is a UCD graduate of 1994 and an RCSI vocationally trained GP.
She has been involved in part-time sessional general practice on the North side of Dublin for 12 years, enjoying different assistantships and accumulating diverse experience in general practice. She has been a part-time salaried associate in Sutton since 2009.
She has also been involved in medical education since 2000 as secretary of the Corrigan Faculty, and has been a CME tutor at the Corrigan Faculty in North County Dublin for four years. She was involved as an assistant programme director and clinical tutor on the RCSI scheme for three years.
Her medical education interest was formalised with the ICGP/Queens University Post Graduate Certificate in Medical Education. Her special interests are dermatology, communication skills and professionalism with particular interest in self-care.
She is a trained yoga teacher and is interested in mindfulness meditation, and is enjoying the journey to hopefully becoming a trainer.
Dr Neasa McDonagh, MICGP, MRCPI
Dr McDonagh is a UCD graduate of 1992 and a graduate of the North Eastern Regional GP Training Scheme of 1997.
She has been working as a GP since then and has been practising in Ballymun since 2003. Neasa worked in undergraduate teaching in the RCSI from 2001 to 2003. She then became Assistant Programme Director of the RCSI GP scheme from 2003 to 2005.
She is also a trainer for the RCSI GP scheme and takes students from the undergraduate and graduate entry programs in the RCSI.
Dr Cathy Cullen MICGP
Dr Cathy Cullen is a UCD graduate of 1989. She trained as a GP on the Dublin Vocational Training Scheme.
She started with a year in general practice in Wexford in 1992. She did a further year of obstetrics and gynaecology in Holles Street.
She worked as a sessional GP in Springfield, Tallaght for five years before moving as a part-time salaried associate to Goatstown in 1999.
She has been a CME tutor in the Merrion faculty for the last 12 years and has been involved in the education of small groups of up to 90 GPs annually throughout this time.
About the Training Posts
The first year will consist of four-month posts in general medicine, Accident and Emergency, and paediatrics. The second-year trainees do four-month posts in psychiatry and obstetrics/gynaecology and then choose between palliative care, ENT and ophthalmology. They will then spend one year in general practice and in Fourth Year will change to a second general practice.
Hospital posts have been confirmed for Year 1. We are working on Year 2 and hope to confirm year 2 by May 2010.
Year 1
- Paediatrics (Temple Street or Crumlin)
- Casualty (Mater or Beaumont)
- General Medicine/Care of the Elderly (Mater, Beaumont, James Connolly)
Year 2
- Psychiatry (St. Vincent's, Fairview - 3 posts/Beaumont - 1 post)
- Obstetrics(Our Lady of Lourdes,Drogheda/Wexford General/Mullingar)
- Palliative Care/Minor Injuries/ Infectious disease (Raheny/Mater/St James)
About the Day Release Programme
The day release programme will take place once a week on Thursdays. During hospital attachments there will be half-day release and during the GP-based attachments there will be full-day release.
Education will be learner-focused and will use problem-based learning approaches in a small group educational setting. We place an emphasis on the ability of the group as a whole to augment and maximise the teaching opportunities of each individual trainee. In addition we will provide individual mentoring for all trainees to ensure they are both supported and challenged.
We seek to teach trainees how to critically apply Evidence Based Medicine Methods to become expert clinical practitioners.
We wish to maximise each student's ability to communicate effectively by using the Calgary Cambridge communication skills in which both members of the team have received professional training.
We will provide a modular delivery of the curriculum based mostly on the ICGP May 2007 GP curriculum with some interesting additions, e.g. social medicine, health promotion, personal development, etc. These modules will run vertically through the four years, building competence according to experience and horizontally through reflective and group learning.
We will provide a personal development module to stimulate, challenge, encourage and enthuse trainees. Reflectivity is increasingly recognised as a core clinical competency that is required for us to move beyond the traditional limited view of doctors as simple scientists to the more exciting concept that medicine requires the involvement of our human, rational and emotional selves.
We will provide a professional development module that emphasises the importance of professional ethical conduct, the essential elements for providing quality care (including evaluation using audit of quality), and the skills and values that promote effective inter-professional relationships.
The programme will have a special interest in developing a passion among trainees for working in areas of deprivation. A special module will be provided to teach trainees about health inequalities, providing healthcare in areas of deprivation, barriers to healthcare, healthcare for hard to reach groups such as homeless people and travellers, and lastly health policy and change management. This module seeks to equip trainees to work effectively in areas of deprivation and also to implement positive change at both practice and policy levels to improve healthcare in these areas.
We will incorporate an arts and humanities approaches in our teaching. This will involve the use of film, drama, art, literature and poetry in our teaching sessions.
Trainees will be taught research skills. There will be equal emphasis on quantitative and qualitative research methods. The focus will be on teaching trainees the importance of research and how it can be used to 'make a difference'. The focus will be on 'learning to love it' rather than 'forcing it down your throat'. All trainees will conduct an audit in Third Year.
All trainees will conduct a special interest project in their final year.
We hope that trainees on this programme will end up having fun, being challenged, and developing as scientists and as emotionally in touch communicators, as well as doctors who care.