Research & Teaching

Teaching

The doctors and nurses at the surgery are often involved in teaching younger colleagues such as medical students and trainee GPs and nurses. Thank you for generally being willing to support us in helping to train the next generation of medics.

Sometimes it is natural that our patients want to consult their doctor or nurse without a student present. Please just say at Reception if you prefer to see your usual GP without a student or trainee being present.

Research

We believe that good medical practice needs to be based on sound research, so that we understand as much as possible about how we become sick and what works to make us healthier.

This practice is an active member of the UCD GP Research Network, the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP) Sentinel Network and the Northeastern GP Training Programme. These links allow us to undertake research and quality improvement projects to enhance medical knowledge and the way we work for you.

How your information is used

We may invite you to participate in a project where a researcher would like to see your file or talk to you. For these projects we will always ask for your consent first. For some other research and quality assurance projects involving large numbers of patients, we might wish to use some anonymised information from your personal record for our study. Anonymised means your name, address and date of birth are never shared — just the information in your file that is of interest to our research (such as cholesterol level, weight, length of time you have been a patient, prescribed medication, or whether you have been vaccinated). Because the information is anonymised, no one will be able to link the information we use from your file to you as a person.

An example of a research project of this sort might include studying whether we are giving as many seasonal ‘flu vaccines as we are supposed to, or whether our patients’ blood-pressure control is reaching the standards expected by best practice.

Your right to opt out

For these kinds of projects we sometimes will not ask you to consent to our using your information, but would ask you to tell us if you object to our ever using these sorts of details from your file, even if they are never linked to you as an identifiable person. This is called opting out. All you have to do is tell us and we will never include your information — you could email us, write to us, or tell any of the doctors that you do not wish to participate.

It is your choice not to be involved in teaching or to participate in research, and we guarantee that this will not affect the care we give you. Research and teaching are just a small part of what we do — we are here to help you with your illness, and we believe that teaching and research makes us better at doing that.