Clinical skills for graduates

Medical interns: You could call it their "gap week" but some 90 recently qualified medical graduates at University College Cork have put the time between graduating and going to work in hospitals to good use by learning some of the essential clinical skills they will require.

The Final MB Clinical Skills Course is organised by Cork University Hospital intern tutor and consultant in emergency medicine Dr Chris Luke and head of medical school at UCC Prof Eamon Quigley.

Dr Luke said the two-day workshops developed out of a growing disillusionment among graduates when they were confronted by the reality of the responsibilities facing them as young interns, just a month out of university. Graduates were emerging from UCC, and other university medical schools, having spent six years studying courses that were very text book-driven, often delivered in a haphazard fashion and overloaded with information, he said.

Recognised as a problem by both the Medical Council and the medical schools, the issue of providing interns with clinical skills was first confronted by UCC about five years when it set up the course. "There was a growing resentment among young doctors about the mismatch between their undergraduate preparation and the realities of life as a young intern - young doctors were suddenly moving from a student life to life in hospitals with huge responsibilities."

The workshops cover essential clinical skills such as carrying out blood tests and electro cardiograms (ECGs), resuscitation techniques such as defibrillation, and good prescribing practice of medicines, according to Dr Luke.