Pupils get hands-on experience of being a doctor

There was an air of hush as the teenager bent down to the breathing figure on the table.

“There’s no air on the left side,” remarked the long-haired lad after applying his stethoscope across the chest of the mannequin.

Dr Dara Byrne turns around to the man holding the small computer, raising her eyebrows. He shakes his head.

“Listen again,” the consultant directs her student. “There’s crackling on the left, no air on the right.” “Right. Now why would there be no air?”

“Collapsed lung?” he tries. “Correct,” she smiles.

This lesson in diagnostics is repeated over the course of an afternoon as the group of 30 Transition Years from across the city and West of Ireland get to practice on the “patient”, known as SIMman.

The robot, which costs around €100,000, is as close to the real thing that these students can get short of being fourth year medical students in university.

They can listen to his breathing, draw blood, check vitals such as blood pressure, temperature, administer intravenous drugs and even catheterise him.

These young bloods are ensconced in the upstairs of what is known as the Nurses Building of University Hospital Galway for three days getting the coolest work experience ever.

Deep in the heart of the simulation centre is a team of interns, junior doctors and consultants who are giving up their free time to inspire the next generation of medics.

By the end of their time here, they will have discovered how to clear someone’s airway, learned how to plaster a broken limb, sutured an open wound and put in a drip.

The students will be given a lesson on tips in communicating with a patient while taking their medical history.

They will also have heard first hand what it’s like to work at all levels of the hospital’s pecking order, with talks from a medical student, an intern, a GP, a psychiatrist, consultant surgeons and paramedics.

The very hands-on work experience programme in the simulation centre was piloted last year by Dr Dara Byrne, the intern coordinator for the Saolta hospital group.

It was her belief that by giving a really practical and frank insight into the life of a medic, those who are best suited to the career will be further encouraged, while those who are not will be dissuaded from pointless years of study.

A place on the programme has so far been granted to those who have simply written into the hospital requesting work experience in medicine.

The feedback was overwhelmingly positive for last year’s trainees in the essays they handed in on completion.

“It really showed me the positive side of medicine as a career and that it does not always have to serious and hard work,” remarked one.

“By getting involved in the course, I have decided that medicine is the career of my choice. I will work towards that goal and I hope to see you all in the medical school of NUIG September 2016,” wrote another.

If any were turned off, they kept it to themselves,” smiles consultant psychiatrist Dr Elizabeth Walsh who has helped coordinate the programme.

“For other work experience segments, they say they are put sitting in an office in front of a computer. Here they are constantly on the go.

“You will know if it’s for you at the end of the course. One thing they are is totally exhausted by the end of it.”

One of the most exciting parts of the course is learning how to manage emergency situations.

The students are given particular medical scenarios and asked to react. There could be an asthmatic student finishing sport who had turned blue; a sports person had just received a kick in the head; a youth who had just eaten a chocolate bar containing nuts and they have a nut allergy.

The pupils get an insider’s guide to an ambulance and get to feel what it’s like to get strapped into a gurney.

During the hour with SIMman last Wednesday, students were asked to identify a crackle, rub or a wheeze in the chest. The sound of a erratic heart beat or inside the colon is contained another gadget.

“It’s really weird,” remarks one, on hearing sounds through the stethoscope.

“Really weird. That’s some diagnosis,” quips Dr Byrne.

She turns to lightly admonish another who is a little too rough inserting tubes into the nose.

“You have to be kind of careful,” she says breezily. “If you cause bleeding you’ll make the breathing worse. He may stop.”