Anatomy of a medical class: minister opens TCD's €131m institute

TRINITY COLLEGE Dublin’s school of medicine, the country’s oldest medical school, was yesterday formally moved to the university’s new Biomedical Sciences Institute on Pearse Street.

The school, which pioneered medical education in Ireland in the 18th century, was previously scattered across several buildings and annexes on the university’s College Green campus.

The college’s 1,250 undergraduate and postgraduate medical students will now be taught under the one roof for the first time.

Significantly, their tuition will take place in the same environment as some of the most advanced medical research in the country, affording students a first-hand experience of “the bench to bedside approach to research”.

Placing preclinical education in a “research-rich environment” was one of the key recommendations of the Buttimer and Fottrell reports, published in 2006, on how medical education in Ireland should be overhauled.

The centre’s teaching equipment includes laboratories with the latest technologies, 300-seat lecture theatres, seminar rooms and an anatomy dissection room with audio and video equipment facilities to enhance the learning experience.

Funding of just over €21 million was provided by the Higher Education Authority and the Department of Education and Skills.

The €131 million institute, which was formally opened last June, brings together the university’s five main research schools; medicine, biochemistry and immunology, pharmacy and pharmaceutical science, chemistry and bioengineering. It also hosts three research centres looking at cancer drug discovery, immunology and medical device technologies.

While students have been attending classes in the new building since September, the school was officially opened yesterday by Minister of State for Research and Innovation Seán Sherlock.

Mr Sherlock said housing medical students in a multidisciplinary research environment would allow students to “relate what happens in the lab to the patient.

He said the research taking place at the institute was vital to the country’s economic recovery.