Medicine 2030

Project overview

At UCD School of Medicine, our programmes are subject to ongoing and continuous improvement based on feedback from our stakeholders and changes in the practice of medicine. Medicine 2030 is a comprehensive review launched in 2023/2024, the outcome of which will be the implementation of a new curriculum for our undergraduate entry and graduate entry medicine programmes. The new Medicine 2030 curriculum will launch in 2026/2027 academic session. Click here for more information.

Medicine 2030 Update – All Staff

July 2025

As we approach the completion of Phase 3b (detailed design) stage of the Medicine 2030 project, I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their ongoing commitment. Your excellent contributions have enabled strong progress towards our new curriculum notwithstanding the demands of our existing commitments. The Project Team is energised by the shared enthusiasm for creating a new programme that retains the best parts of our existing curriculum, addresses the needs identified during our consultation, and which positions UCD Medicine as a leader in medical education.

Recap of Progress to Date: 

  • Phase 1 set the foundation, articulating our programme’s Mission, Values and Ambition for Change. It defined the graduate attributes and competencies needed to thrive in early clinical practice, and to pursue fulfilling professional careers in medicine beyond UCD.
  • Phase 2 involved a wide-ranging consultation with faculty, clinical colleagues, students and alumni helping us to identify opportunities for innovation and improvement. 
  • Phase 3a marked the beginning of detailed design, with interdisciplinary Design Teams tasked with developing specific curriculum components and learning outcomes, both at a Subject-level and across each curriculum phase.

Phase 3b - Synthesis and Integration

In Phase 3b, we consolidated individual Design Teams outputs (which comprises over 170 pages and over 600 subject-level learning objectives) into a single integrated curriculum narrative. This synthesis focused on:

  • Ensuring clear progression of learning and meaningful connectivity across components
  • Identifying potential gaps or duplication of content
  • Assessing our proposed curriculum against the findings from Phase 2 consultation
  • Assessing our proposed curriculum against the HSE Intern Entrustable Professional Activities
  • Benchmarking against the published curricula of 12 leading international medical schools (including local comparators of TCD and RCSI). 

Integrative Longitudinal Themes

Our analysis deliberately did not focus on traditional subject strengths which we explicitly acknowledge and which are clearly evident in our Medicine 2030 curriculum description. Instead, we drew on the Design Team insights to identify five integrative longitudinal themes that express the professional developmental journey of our students as we prepare them for immediate and lifelong clinical practice. These five themes are:

  1. Global & Sustainable Healthcare
  2. Professional Clinical Practice
  3. Patient-Centred & Quality Care
  4. Emerging Technologies & 21st Century Healthcare
  5. Curiosity, Evidence & Research

These themes provide a coherent framework for weaving together the essential biomedical knowledge, broad clinical acumen and professional development our students will achieve as they progress through the programme.

Next Steps:

We will next engage with Heads of Subject to:

  • Review each Subject’s contribution to the new curriculum
  • Identify how each Subject may contribute to the integrative longitudinal themes

In parallel, we will be inviting expressions of interest from academic staff to coordinate or co-coordinate the realisation of these themes as we move to the next implementation phase (programme structure and module build) early in the 2025/2026 academic session. Further academic workshops will support this process and the ongoing refinement of the themes.

Resources & Feedback

A reminder that key documents, including Design Team outputs, guidance materials and reference resources, are available on the Medicine 2030 BrightSpace pages and the Clinical Education & Skills Brightspace pages.

The Project Team welcomes your feedback and your input to shaping the new curriculum that we are building together.  Thank you again for your sustained engagement and commitment. 

Medicine 2030 captures the best of UCD Medicine and we are very excited to now proceed to the next phase of the project.

Curriculum Committee

A Medicine 2030 Committee has been established to design the Medicine 2030 curriculum and recommend it to the Medicine Programmes Board and Academic Council of the University. 

This Committee is chaired by Prof Martyn Partridge (Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Imperial College London) with our Associate Dean for Programmes & Educational Innovation, Assoc. Prof Suzanne Donnelly as the Deputy Chair and the School's academic lead. The Committee membership includes the University’s Dean of Undergraduate Studies, representatives of each of our six academic sections, the Chairs of our three principal Medicine Degree Committees, a Patient Educator representative, two recent UCD Medicine graduates, two senior professional staff, and three senior academic nominees of the Dean.

Consultation

During January to April 2024, we conducted a wide-ranging consultation on our current medicine curriculum and the preparedness of our graduates for medical practice. We have invited feedback from almost 10,000 individuals including students, alumni, patient representatives, and academic, adjunct academic & professional staff.

We would like to thank those who took the time to provide detailed, constructive feedback. Respondents acknowledged the quality of our existing programmes, the importance of patient contact, and the inspiring role models that help prepare our graduates for clinical practice. Current students value Stage 1 in promoting engagement with the University, the programme and the UCD community. Our excellent teachers and inspiring role models were commended, as were our strong foundation in biomedical sciences, and the breadth of clinical training across primary, secondary, and tertiary care settings. 

Mission, Ambition, Aims and Objectives

The Medicine 2030 Committee has endorsed the re-statement of our programme mission as:

Our programme seeks to prepare, enable and inspire tomorrow’s doctors for excellence in compassionate patient care and for professional fulfilment in the service of patients and the lifelong pursuit of better health for all.

The Committee also approved both the statement of our change ambition and our overarching educational aims:

  1. To prepare our graduates for their first roles in clinical practice as committed, caring, competent doctors and valued professional members of the modern healthcare team.
  2. To inspire and enable our graduates’ vocational fulfilment and career success far beyond their time with us in UCD.

Programme Objectives

Medicine 2030 will enable our graduates to:

  1. Provide the highest standards of care for their patients and to deliver compassionate, holistic patient-centred healthcare to all they serve.
  2. Understand and apply the principles and methods of the biomedical and clinical sciences, underpinned by our strong tradition of scholarship and excellence.
  3. Develop the necessary skills for successful lifelong learning and the education of others in pursuit of better health for all. These include a sound understanding of the scientific method; development of skills for critical thinking and analysis of data/evidence and effective communication skills.
  4. Embrace and utilise the broader range of sciences deployed in modern medical practice. These include psychology and behavioural science; technology-enhanced patient care and decision-making; and the application of new technology to 21st century healthcare practice.
  5. Develop skills to work as valued members of interprofessional teams underpinned by our ethos of collegiality, collaboration, respect, and excellence in care.
  6. Foster self care and a capacity to manage uncertainty and complexity.
  7. Identify and develop their professional interests and strengths for professional fulfilment and in pursuit of our mission of better health for all.
  8. Success, for those who seek it, in prestigious competitive postgraduate training programmes in Ireland and abroad.

Next Steps

Having re-stated both our target Graduate Attributes and our Programme Outcomes, the Medicine 2030 Committee has commissioned a number of Design Teams that will build the constituent educational components. These components each contribute to the overall programme outcomes and successively build towards the attainment of our target Graduate Attributes. The Design Team work programme is informed by our agreed educational principles and the consultation feedback.

Current Design Teams include:

  • Team 1 – Biomedical Sciences
  • Team 2 – Patients Doctors & Healthcare
  • Team 3 - Integrated Biomedical / Clinical Capstone Cases & Clinical Skills
  • Team 4 – Core & Specialty Clinical Clerkships
  • Team 5 – Traditional Specialty Clerkships
  • Team 6 – Student Options & Deep Dive
  • Team 7 – Preparedness for Practice
  • Team 8 – Teaching, Learning & Assessment

Each Design Team comprises typically 20 members from across the academic subject areas, drawing on over 150 academic, clinical, patient advocates, and professionals staff.  Each team is led by two Co-Chairs who report progress periodically to the Medicine 2030 Committee.

Further Information

For further information on Medicine 2030, please contact the project team at Medicine2030@ucd.ie.