As most people know the plan is to do medicine after school (brave I know) so I thought it would be a good idea to attend the RCSI Open Day for 4th- 6th Year which took place on Wednesday 4th January.
I had to get the bus quite early in the morning in order to get to the college for 9am (which is a completely different story because I forgot my bus fair so the bus driver let me on for free) I tried the 25D – a new bus route in Lucan – for the first time, and for anyone going to work or college early in the morning I highly recommend it because it got me there in literally 30 minutes as opposed to an hour on the 25a. So I arrived to town 40 minutes early, to pass time I had a hot chocolate in one of my favourite café's, Accents on Lower St. Steven's Street. After passing some time there I headed to the college and signed in, we got our group number and timetable for the day which looked deadly tbh.
I went into the main lecture hall and saved a spot for my friend Lucy who I know from the Gaeltacht. After chatting for a bit we were introduced to Professor Arnie Hill – The head of surgery in RCSI and a consultant of Beaumont hospital – He told us a bit about the college and we were introduced to current pupils for a Q&A. But here’s where it starts to get into the good stuff, we began our workshops.
In our groups we went to various different workshops such as: Orthopedics, where we got to put a cast on each other, Obstetrics and Gynecology, where we got to watch a live ultrasound being done on an expectant mother, Clinical Skills, where we got to take bloods, analyse the blood under a microscope, practice stitches and take blood pressure, Surgical Skills, where we used surgical practice equipment.
One of the best parts of the day was getting to experience live laparoscopic gall bladder surgery using 360o virtual reality (in layman terms its removing a gall bladder using keyhole surgery). It was pretty cool, despite the surgeon accidentally popping the gall bladder which caused bile to go everywhere (lovely).
Overall it was a great experience and if anything it wants me to do Medicine even more now, now I just have to get 625 points in the leaving cert and ace the HPAT...great...
