Mark McCorry RVN, BScAAB graduated with a Diploma in Veterinary Nursing from University College Dublin (UCD) in 2009 and graduated from the University of Portsmouth in the UK with a BSc (Hons) Applied Animal Behaviour degree in 2013. Mark joined the BSc (Hons) in Veterinary Nursing programme in UCD as an occasional lecturer from 2010 to 2019. Mark has been invited to speak at several International and Irish conferences including International Veterinary Simulation in Teaching Conference (InVeST) in Grenada 2023, the Irish Veterinary Nurses Congress and the UCD Veterinary Conference. He has had several articles published in the Irish Veterinary Journal.

Teaching practical skills

Having worked for over 15 years in veterinary practice and small animal emergency, and as a head veterinary nurse, Mark moved to full-time teaching in 2019 and is the clinical skills manager and tutor in UCD’s School of Veterinary Medicine. Mark is extensively involved in teaching practical classes for both the veterinary medicine and veterinary nursing programmes by facilitating practical classes and self-directed student clinical skills practice sessions. He provides students with feedback and helps them prepare for clinical skills practical exams, external clinical placements, and final year veterinary hospital rotations.

An area of research which Mark has a particular interest in is simulation model design, creation and development. His aim is to create teaching models that can be used to facilitate skills teaching, continued skills improvement, and assessment. Mark and Clinical Skills Centre colleague, Tracey Murphy, designed, developed and validated a canine feeding tube placement model which they presented at the InVeST Conference in 2023. Continued collaboration and research will be ongoing with the aim of publishing papers on teaching models that have been developed and validated.

Another area of particular interest is interprofessional education. UCD is the only institution in Ireland that has both a veterinary medicine and veterinary nursing programme. This provides a unique opportunity to allow both professions to learn, work and collaborate together prior to graduation. Mark and Dr Renagh Kelly MVB have already developed and piloted a volunteer case-based, clinical skills-focused, interprofessional simulation project and presented their initial results at InVeST 2023 and VetEd in Edinburgh 2023 and they are looking forward to developing this well-received project further.

Veterinary simulation games

Pamela Gillick has been an assistant professor on the veterinary nursing programme since 2009. On the teaching and learning side, Pamela is collaborating with Robin Farrell, Mark McCorry and Kate Acton in creating veterinary simulation games aimed at both facilitators and students. She coordinates hospital rotations in the UCD Veterinary Hospital for stage four veterinary nursing students. She particularly enjoys the collegial connection with the clinical environment. She is an active member of a working group that explores the next steps in educational pathways for veterinary nursing.

Pamela is a veterinary nurse with an omnibus BSc (Hon) and MSc (Equine Science) and has a keen interest in developing research pathways that integrate veterinary nursing and complement the research tapestry within the school. She completed the Professional Certificate TEARAP. She has had an abundance of learning opportunities, with leading researchers, from getting a glimpse into translational research in goats to assisting with nutritional trials in pigs. Pamela is driving the next steps to support ethical clinical research pathways that embody robust study design and ensure the welfare of patients. Her work is informed by regular discussions with Siobhan Mullan, the UCD chair in animal welfare and veterinary ethics.

On a wider school level, Pamela represents UCD on a newly-founded UK steering group that has tentatively been named the Association for Veterinary Ethics Committee (AVEC). The aims of the association are to harmonise ethics standards and promote good practices for clinical veterinary research.

Animal welfare and veterinary ethics

Andrea Dineen has been involved in the UCD Veterinary Nursing programme since 2006 and currently works as assistant professor within the Veterinary Nursing Section. Andrea joined UCD in 2006 as director for the UCD Diploma in Veterinary Nursing (DipVN).

Her responsibilities at that time included assuring UCD’s veterinary nursing programme achieved both European (ACOVENE) and national (VCI) accreditation standards as well as the conversion of the part-time Diploma to a Level 8 Bachelor of Science degree in Veterinary Nursing (BSc (VN)). She has extensive experience teaching and assessing veterinary nursing students. Andrea completed her Masters in Veterinary Medicine in UCD in 2013, the focus of which was animal welfare.

Her research areas of interest currently include animal welfare, veterinary ethics, evidence-based practice (EBP) and critical thinking skills within undergraduate health care/veterinary programmes.

Along with her colleagues, Dr Robin Farrell (director of veterinary nursing) and Emma O’Neill, (associate professor of small animal medicine), Andrea recently participated in a collaborative health care educators’ project within UCD which produced a framework for the teaching of EBP skills within undergraduate healthcare curricula. The project has been presented at international health professional education conferences and an article submitted (publication pending) to a health professional education journal. For more information about the EVIBEC project, please visit the dedicated UCD webpage: https://www.ucd.ie/chas/research/evibec/