UCD School of Medicine & Medical Science : Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin, Dublin

About Our Lady's Children's Hospital

Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin is Ireland's largest acute paediatric teaching hospital, providing evidence-based quaternary, tertiary and secondary quality care to children & adolescents. It is the national centre in Ireland for a range of specialities including childhood cancers and blood disorders, cardiac diseases, major burns, cystic fibrosis and rheumatology.

Opened in 1956, the hospital was specifically designed to care for and treat sick children and has 227 bed and cots in use. In 2011 the hospital had 72,601 out-patient attendances, 33,980 emergency attendances, 18,325 day cases, 9,809 in-patient admissions and performed 16,373 surgical procedures.

The hospital is a major paediatric teaching centre for medical and nursing students from University College Dublin, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and Trinity College Dublin. It has substantial research activity at the National Children's Research Centre with well-equipped laboratory facilities for the investigation of the biological basis of childhood disease.

Student Experience

Our medical students typically rotate through Our Lady's Children's Hospital during specialist paediatrics modules during the final or penultimate years of the degree programme. This six week module is designed to build on the paediatric history taking and knowledge base from previous paediatric experience. The module intoduces students to clinical paediatrics and its underlying patholological mechanisms, as well as the investigation and treatment of these conditions.

The paediatrics module places strong emphasis on clinical skills and understanding and hence is largely clinically based in the form of small group clinical sesions, clinical demonstrations, self-directed ward-based learning and of course traditional lectures; delivered by consultants.

The module is delivered between Dublin's paediatric teaching hospitals (The Children's University Hospital, Temple Steet and Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin). In addition students spend a week on a peripheral paediatric rotation in one of our affiliated regional hospitals (Wexford, Castlebar, Portlaois or Clonmel Hospitals).

Our research interests at the hospital focus on paediatric emergency medicine under the academic leadership of Professor Ronan O’Sullivan, and in translational research in paediatric gastroenterology under the academic leadership of Professor Billy Bourke.