For Siobhan Murphy, an Ireland medical training centre offered a cutting-edge job back at home.
For Siobhan Murphy, the expansion of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland campus in Dublin was a call to come home.
Born in Cork , Siobhan had been away for 10 years, most recently working in London with the science faculty of an inner city secondary school. When she saw the ad for an operations manager on the website of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, she seized the chance. RCSI was expanding its medical simulations center in a new building financed by the European Investment Bank, the EU bank. Siobhan, 31, was hired to help open and oversee the centre.
“It’s a dream job, and it was a great opportunity to get in and start up the building,” Murphy said. “RCSI has such great programs, and a really good reputation.”
Playing doctor at Ireland medical training centre
The new facility, financed with a €50 million loan from the European Investment Bank in 2016, houses a cutting-edge simulation center that allows doctors, technicians and medical and pharmaceutical students to learn to operate high-tech machines and even practice their bedside manner on pediatric and obstetric mannequins in a safe training environment.
Siobhan is one of several new hires as part of the college’s expansion. The simulation centre only had two technicians when she arrived two years ago. “It’s a great job with brilliant opportunities. No two days are the same,” she said. “The loan we got created that opportunity.”
The simulation centre, which opened in July 2017, won a national award for the best educational lab in Ireland. “We’re on a high from that,” Siobhan said. The centre sets “a really high standard for medication education” in Ireland, she added.
Siobhan’s job is one of millions created with the European Investment Bank’s support. By 2021, investments signed by the European Investment Bank Group in 2017 alone are expected to raise EU gross domestic product by 1.1% and to create 1.2 million jobs. Even in 2036, EU GDP will be 0.7% higher as a result of the European Investment Bank’s 2017 investments, and 650,000 extra jobs will have been added.
In addition to the new simulation centre, the European Investment Bank loan is also helping RCSI expand and modernise teaching facilities across six buildings of its St. Stephen’s Green campus. The loan will support research laboratories, mock-operating theatres, a 500-seat auditorium, sports facilities and seminar spaces. The project also includes an expansion of the research and teaching facilities at the Smurfit building of Beaumont Hospital, the college’s primary teaching hospital.
