(c) 2004, 2008 UCC Medical Society.

The second year of the graduate entry program parallels the 3rd year of the 5 year program. The first six months of GEM2 are separate and the rest of the year is integrated with the 3rd years.

2009-10 is the first year of GEM2 so the below guide is provisional as feedback from the guinea pig group will result in some changes to the curriculum for next year

Thanks to Angela McSweeney for putting together a tentative guide for the year!

The first four months includes an introductory hospital experience (Clinical Medicine 1), Behavioural Science, Neuroscience (Fundamentals of Medicine 4), Global Health and Disease, and a Special Studies Module.
The graduate class as you know it will soon be no more.  In January of Year 2 the graduate class merges with the third year of the direct entry programme and both classes follow the same hospital rotation programme the one exception being that members of the grad class do not need to complete the epidemiology teaching block as they have completed this as part of year 1.

Fundamentals of Medicine 4

This module and its examination take a similar format to the equivalent modules in GEM 1 and most of the pre-clinical science lecturers and textbooks do not change with the exception of anatomy.  The most popular text is Neuroanatomy by Crossman and Neary and a good neuroanatomy atlas (available in the library of DR).  The one big difference with this module is the examination of anatomy by a flag exam in the dissection room.  For this reason it is important to attend DR as the pictures in the atlas never look quite like the real thing!

Special Studies Module

These are subject to change year on year but the SSMs for the academic year 09/10 are available at the UCC website.

Clinical Medicine 1

For the ’09-‘10 academic year, the graduate entry students attended hospital placements on Fridays as part of Clinical Medicine 1.  Each student attended each hospital for two consecutive weeks.  The hospitals included all the Cork teaching hospitals and the regional hospitals in Tralee and Clonmel.  Most students rotated through medicine and surgery for one day at each site with the exception of CUH which focused specifically on anaesthetics.

January and beyond

The second term follows that of Year 3 in the Direct Entry Programme.  Students rotate through four month-long teaching blocks.  Two are hospital rotations and one each based in a GP surgery and in Brookfield brushing up your clinical skills.  These blocks can be in any order and are assigned randomly.  It may also be possible for Canadian students to complete their GP rotation at home.  The possible hospital rotations are:

• CUH/Bon Secours
• Clonmel/South Infirmary-Victoria University Hospital
• Kerry General Hospital (Tralee)/MUH