Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda

Very poorly organised department. Have to organise your own cover to take a day off so interns end up covering 2-3 teams at a time while the SHOs do nothing. Very busy department. Be organised, arrive 10-15 mins early to print the list. Go through switch for consults, many teams never answer their bleeps. If you're taking holidays you need to find another intern to cover your team so try and sort this out early. Don't let nurses bully you!

Day-to-day is mainly ward-based — ward rounds in the morning followed by looking after ward patients and covering jobs while the rest of the team are in clinic or theatre. A lot of the work is service-driven, and you can end up covering multiple teams at times. You’ll be dealing with jobs, consults (often via switch), and chasing teams who don’t always answer bleeps. Depending on the team, you may also cover endoscopy, where you’re consenting and cannulating patients. If your consultant has elective lists, you’ll also be admitting patients for surgery. Being organised early in the day (e.g. printing lists, prioritising jobs) makes a big difference to how manageable things are.

This is a great job if you’re interested in paediatrics — multiple people have gone straight onto paeds schemes or into paeds jobs in Australia from it. The hours are relatively short, so make the most of the time. It’s a good opportunity to get involved in an audit and build your CV. Also worth taking every chance to attempt procedures with supervision — there’s a lot of learning to be gained from it.

Pretty much exclusively on the general paeds ward doing ward stuff. One week in NICU to learn some neonates. No ED, clinics or postnatal unless you specifically asked and they could facilitate it. Ward rounds. As an intern you get the least complex patients and have a lot of support from SHOs and Regs.

Poor senior supervision, good quality SHOs (all scheme), great nurses, left on your own a lot, heavy workload, complex patients. Be organised, have a systematic approach to read ECGs, don't let the nurses pressure you.

Cover the cardiology/general medical ward. SHOs and regs covered CCU, clinic etc. As an intern you only cover the ward. Can be very short staffed at times with only one SHO and one intern.