Department of
General Practice
Department of
General Practice
The Department of General Practice is located, with the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, in Distillery House, North Mall. This is the large building found at the top of the North Mall and the bottom of Sundays Well Road just across the footbridge over the North Channel of the River Lee near the Mercy Hospital.
University College Cork
Distillery House
North Mall, Cork,
Ireland
+353-21-904217
+353-21-904216
email: gp@ucc.ie
About the Department
The Department of General Practice was established in June 1997 with the appointment of Colin Bradley to the Chair. Prior to his appointment UCC had an involvement with postgraduate training in general practice as a participant (along with the Southern Health Board) in the management of the Cork Vocational Training Programme for General Practice. Responsibility for undergraduate teaching in general practice had, until 1997, been vested in the former Department of Social Medicine. With Professor Bradley's appointment this is set to expand.
The first innovation to be undertaken by the Department was the institution of a Family Attachment Scheme in which students in the second year of their course visit a family one of whose members has a long-term health problem. Suitable families are selected by local general practitioners who also support and guide the students during their involvement with the family. The seminars for fourth and fifth years have been revamped and will now be related to student's clinical experience in general practice which will become a permanent feature of the curriculum . This year (1997/1998) students will have a two week clinical attachment in general practice to take place in the third term of the fourth year. The department is also instituting some additional video-based training in communication skills for the third years to be offered during their introduction to clinical studies. Finally, the Department of General Practice, in conjunction with the Department of Psychiatry, is developing behavioural science teaching for the medicine course.