Teaching Programme

The Department of Psychiatry, NUI Galway focuses on delivering high quality education to undergraduate medical students and provides excellent teaching on psychiatry related topics to students across a range of other courses in NUI Galway including Psychology, Health Promotion, Occupational Therapy and Podiatry.

Undergraduate teaching in psychiatry to medical students is predominantly in Year 4 of Medicine, with psychiatry contributing to three modules, the Primary Care and Mental Health Module (20 credits), the Advanced Clinical Skills Module (15 credits) and the Special Study Module (SSM) (5 credits)

A wide range of teaching and learning methods are employed in these modules including lectures, clinical skill tutorials, problem based learning sessions, self-directed learning, staff (doctor and nurse) shadowing, workshops and video based learning sessions. Clinical placements in general adult psychiatry occur in both semester 1 and 2 with students spending at least four weeks in both semesters in clinical placement. Specialist attachments are made to Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Learning Disability Psychiatry, Psychiatry of Later Life, Rehabilitation Psychiatry and Liaison Psychiatry. Students visit (in company of a multidisciplinary team member) acute psychiatric units, rehabilitation units, day hospitals, day centres, medical and surgical wards as part of the liaison psychiatry service, out-patient clinics and on occasion patients homes. Undergraduate medical students generally spend one semester undertaking clinical attachments at Galway University Hospital and one semester in one of the four NUI Galway Academies (Ballinasloe, Castlebar, Letterkenny and Sligo).

A SSM in mental illness in modern medicine is run in semester 2 which enables students understand how mental illnesses are best conceptualised and how neuroscience ad behavioural sciences can be integrated to improve their management. An opportunity to undertake additional SSMs in psychiatry is also available to students. The Department of Psychiatry also contribute lectures to the Central Nervous System Module in Year 2 of Medicine

Undergraduate students in psychiatry have achieved significant success in recent years and are currently the holders of the Spike Milligan prize for debating and the Henry Hutchinson prize in psychiatry. In addition, undergraduate medical students engage in both clinical and neuroscience research within the department of psychiatry and have had their research published in a number of peer reviewed journals.

Post-graduate teaching in psychiatry includes running 6 one-day post-graduate courses for Basic Specialist Trainees in Psychiatry and providing a Module "Mental Health in Primary Care" for the Masters in Primary Care run by NUI Galway. In addition, psychiatrists, psychologists and nurses have attained (and continue to pursue) PhD, MD, MSc and MMedSci degrees with the department of psychiatry. These post-graduate research degrees have been attained in clinical psychiatry and neuroscience research (see Psychiatry Research Programme).