Health & Social Care

Audiology

The audiology department provides highly specialist diagnostic services, providing an excellent learning opportunity for students. To facilitate as many students as possible, the department provides single day observation placements to students from across universities to observe ENT, Bone Anchored Hearing Aid (BAHA) and vestibular assessments. This includes students from the undergraduate and postgraduate audiology training programmes at Athlone Institute of Technology, University College Cork (UCC) and the University of Manchester.

Clinical nutrition and dietetics

The clinical nutrition and dietetics department provides clinical placement for students from the undergraduate dietetic course at Dublin Institute of Technology/TCD.

Medical social work

The medical social work department provides approximately 30 weeks of clinical placements to students from UCD, TCD, UCC and National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG). The department has also contributed to teaching on undergraduate courses.

Occupational therapy

The occupational therapy department provide clinical placement opportunities to approximately 15 students each year including undergraduate and postgraduate students from Trinity College Dublin (TCD), University of Limerick and National University of Ireland, Galway as well as some overseas students.

Clinical specialist staff have also contributed to the BSc course in TCD.

Pharmacy

The pharmacy department is closely affiliated with the School of Pharmacy at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI). Thirteen of our pharmacists are currently part of the RCSI faculty through honorary appointments and the department have been given support in their teaching, research and publications.

Each year, the department facilitates:

One-year Internship placements for all Irish schools of pharmacy
Six-month placements for overseas pharmacy interns
Six-month pharmacy technician training placements.
Six-week block placements for RCSI pharmacy students
RCSI research protocol students
Funded research summer students

The department is also very actively involved in providing lectures, workshops and patient facing experience across various university programmes.

Physiotherapy

The physiotherapy department has a long standing close relationship with the School of Physiotherapy in University College Dublin (UCD).

Each year the staff at the Mater Hospital physiotherapy department provide placement opportunities to more than 130 students from UCD each year, including shorter observation placements and intensive block placements.

Many of the hospital’s physiotherapists also contribute to practical teaching and examinations on site in UCD, as well as curriculum development, undergraduate and post graduate research activity.

All UCD physiotherapy practice tutors were recently appointed Adjunct Lecturers of UCD and clinical teaching is a core component.

Podiatry

We take students from the BSc in Podiatric Medicine in the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG).

Our podiatry staff also contribute to the UCD Graduate Diploma in Diabetes Care.

Psychology

The psychology department provides placements for all four doctoral programmes in Clinical Psychology in Ireland - UCD, TCD, NUIG, University of Limerick (UL) and soon to be a fifth with the addition of UCC. These placements typically run full-time for approximately six month duration. The department also provides placements for the Doctoral Programme in Counselling Psychology in TCD. These are shorter placements – typically two days a week for nine months.

Department staff also lecture on the courses in both UCD and TCD.

Radiography

The Mater Hospital radiography department has a along standing close relationship with the Diagnostic Imaging Department of UCD. Our radiography department provide intensive block clinical placement to the different stages of undergraduates throughout the curriculum calendar. During that time students get expose to all the different modalities and imaging services that the Mater Hospital provides.

Undergraduate and post graduate students from UCD undertake their practical assessments during or at the end of their clinical placement in the Mater Radiography department.

Together with UCD our department provide placement to overseas students including students from Bologna University in Italy and students from Quinnipiac University in the US.

Our radiography department is a centre of excellence and we pride ourselves in the ongoing quest of continuous professional development self learning with various in house activities including teaching, audits and research work.

Speech and language therapy

The speech and language therapy department has two practice tutors who are affiliated with TCD and NUIG. The tutors coordinate clinical placements for more than 25 speech and language therapy students each year including block placements and observation placements. All of the therapists in the department actively contribute to student teaching.

Department staff also regularly give lectures in their areas of speciality to students at TCD, NUIG and University of Limerick (UL).