Final-year medicine students in Trinity have had crucial clinical assessments – worth 25 per cent of their marks for the year – moved forward five weeks, with the exams to start tomorrow.
Yesterday, in a meeting with the head of the school of medicine and several professors, students were told that the revised date for their exam would be tomorrow, March 11th – over five weeks before they were scheduled to take place in April.
The exam will consist of one long case, rather than multiple cases. The content and time of the exams have also been reduced by the school.
Last Friday, medicine students were told in an email that the weighting attached clinical exams – initially up to 50 per cent of students’ grade for the year – would “be reduced probably to 10 or 15%”.
Yesterday, however, they were advised that the exams would now be worth 25 per cent of their grade for the year.
In an email statement to The University Times, Prof Joseph Harbison, the director of undergraduate teaching and learning in the School of Medicine, said that “after discussion with hospital authorities and with guidance from Infectious Diseases specialists familiar with the National situation we were advised that we could not wait any longer to hold the Clinical Exams and still have them happen.”
“If we deferred”, Harbison wrote, “then there would be a real chance we may not be able to hold them in the next few months and they are necessary to permit students to be qualified as doctors before July”.
Medicine students in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and NUI Galway, Harbison added, have already completed their clinical exams similarly ahead of schedule.
“They will be examined on a long case and we intend that the weighting for the case to be the same or very similar to previous years. After this the students will have 2 written papers in Medicine and Surgery early next month with viva voce examinations on clinical medicine and Surgery later in the month for a large proportion of the class (all which can be carried on outside the hospital environment) and will contribute to their final grades.”
“This has been fully discussed with the class yesterday evening and all questions were answered at the time”, Harbison wrote.
Earlier today, Trinity confirmed in an email to students that all lectures would be held online instead of on campus. Tutorials, laboratory sessions and seminars will go ahead as normal.
Furthermore, the Book of Kells exhibition, the Science Gallery and the Douglas Hyde museum will be closed.
