UCC SONM 25 Year Book

UCC / School of Nursing and Midwifery

Sr. Philomena McHale and Sr. Mary Gibbons) taught at the School. The maternity hospital opened in 1958. In the 1970’s and up until the opening of the maternity hospital at CUH the Bon Secours Hospital had a School of Midwifery. Sister de Lellis Considine was the first Midwifery Tutor. The maternity services at the Bon Secours closed at the opening of the Maternity Hospital at CUH. Similarly, to previously mentioned Schools of Nursing, students attending the Bon Secours Hospital learned to carry out the nurses’ role mainly by caring for patients in “real life” ward situations, supplemented by blocks of theory in the School of Nursing. This way of training ceased in 1997 when the Bon Secours Sisters accepted their first student intake from the general nursing Diploma programme in association with UCC, and under the leadership of Sr. Helena Daly, Director of Nursing. Students of the final two year of the Diploma programme were taught at the School of Nursing under the guidance of the Principal Nurse Tutor Mrs. Catherine Flanagan. Since 2002 students directly enter UCC’s BSc Nursing programme (Degree) but continue to have clinical placements at the Bon Secours Hospital. The Bon Secours Health System Cork is Ireland’s largest private hospital, with more than 300 beds, over a 1,000 staff and 35,000 patients admitted annually. It is a general hospital providing an extensive range of medical and surgical specialties for adults and children including oncology, cardiology, orthopaedics, gastroenterology, and general surgery. Recent developments include the opening of an Acute Medical Assessment Unit and launch of technologically advanced radiotherapy services. The Bon Secours Cork has many quality accreditations including: JCI (Joint Commission International), INAB (Irish National Accreditation Board), and ESMO (the European Society for Medical Oncology accreditation). The Bon Secours Mercy Health, one of the top five largest Catholic health care systems in the United States, is merging with Bon Secours Health System, Ireland.

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