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FEATURE | Medicine

TRINITY MEDICINE

(Photo of Professor Dermot Kelleher)

The Trinity School of Medicine will be celebrating its Tercentenary in 2011 and is calling on its alumni to get involved and join in the preparations. Professor Dermot Kelleher M.B., M.D. (1978), Head of the School of Medicine and Vice Provost of Medical Affairs, gives a personal perspective on his experiences as a TCD student and in his current capacity.

My best memories of the School of Medicine are firstly of the time on the campus, which was great fun at a social level. Academically, I was most interested in biochemistry as a subject. Professor Spencer was here at the time and was responsible for the development of the Wellcome Trust building. It was an exciting time. The most important time for me was the clinical area at Sir Patrick Duns as a medical student. It was such a wonderful hospital, and with great teaching from the late Peter Daly M.B. (1944), Donald Weir M.A., M.D., F.T.C.D. (1958), John (Joe) Kirker M.B., M.A. (1944), and David Lane M.B. (1948), my eyes were opened to medicine as it should be practised: with calm, constant enquiry, and continual interest in the patients. That is when I realised that academic medicine was to be my career path.

The main influence on my career has been Donald Weir. As an individual, Donald was an inspiration. In some way he was a protégé of Peter Gatenby M.D., Hon. F.T.C.D. (1944), who started the seed which brought about the strength of the medical school.

The School has changed since I was a student, especially the hospital structure. Previously, we were scattered around seven small hospitals. Now, we are in two big hospitals, St. James’s and Tallaght. That creates challenges. We have gained a critical mass but have lost the intimacy of the smaller hospitals. That intimacy was critical to the personal development of many of us, and our challenge now is to recreate such intimacy in larger hospital surroundings. Academic medicine and teaching have also gone through a whole set of changes. The curriculum has been restructured _ Professor Shaun McCann led that process. We are trying to get much earlier clinical contact and clinical confidence so that the students are fully prepared when they go into hospital practice.

Now we are a small school but we are punching well above our weight. People like Professor O’Morain have written some of the most cited papers in their field – citation classics. What we really have to do is to build on that to make the school strong internationally. The School of Medicine Tercentenary is the rocket fuel to establish ourselves at the pinnacle over the next three to four years. Funding is the crucial issue.

We have been successful in securing major grants, such as €23M from the Wellcome Trust, which provides us with an opportunity to develop infrastructure for clinical research needed to attract top people. And now we have an external advisory group – the Tercentenary Board – that includes Trinity alumni, who are helping us to think big.


>>TRINITY MEDICINE AT A GLANCE

• Founded in 1711
• 640 students from 35 countries
• Affiliated academic hospitals: St. James’s and Tallaght
• Prominent alumni: Robert Graves (1797-1853), discovered and described hyperthyroidism Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774), writer, poet and physician William Stokes (1804-1878), acknowledged internationally as one of the founders of cardiology Denis Burkitt (1911-1993), discovered, described and diagnosed Burkitt’s Lymphoma


For more information about the Tercentenary please contact:

Fedelma McNamara, School of Medicine
t. +353 (1) 896 1636
e. medicine@tcd.ie