Children's Health Ireland welcomes 378 Non-Consultant Hospital Doctors (NCHDs)
This month, July 2024, Children's Health Ireland (CHI) is delighted to welcome 378 Non-Consultant Hospital Doctors (NCHDs) to the teams working across CHI at Crumlin, CHI at Temple Street, CHI at Connolly and CHI at Tallaght.
July 25, 2024
News, Service updates
A non-consultant hospital doctor (NCHD) is a medical practitioner who works under the supervision of a consultant doctor. NCHDs are integral to the functioning of our hospitals, providing essential services that improve patient outcomes and enhance the quality of care.
As Dr Allan Goldman, Chief Medical Officer of Children's Health Ireland, explains, NCHDs play a crucial role in our children's hospitals by ensuring that patients are provided with continuous care:
“In Children's Health Ireland, NCHDs work closely with consultants, nursing staff, and other healthcare professionals, ensuring a multidisciplinary approach to patient care. NCHDs are trained in various medical procedures and can perform necessary interventions, they are involved in the education and training of medical students and junior staff, and they allow consultants to focus on more complex cases and strategic aspects of patient care. NCHDs often rotate through various specialties during their training, gaining experience in different areas of medicine. So, this collaboration enhances the quality of care and ensures comprehensive treatment plans. “Importantly, our NCHDs ensure that there is always a doctor available for urgent issues and allow for more frequent monitoring and assessments. This allows for timely identification of changes in a child's condition and prompt intervention, which is critical in paediatric care.
“The recruitment and onboarding of 378 NCHDs, marks the largest intake of NCHDs for Children's Health Ireland to date. This was accomplished through the hard work of our Medical HR and Recruitment teams. We extend a very warm welcome to all our new NCHDs and look forward to working with them.
The new recruits undertook a successful cross-site induction, with over 200 participants on-site at Crumlin, Temple Street, and Tallaght, in addition to online attendees and speakers. Throughout their induction, Children's Health Ireland’s new doctors received invaluable presentations, key information about CHI, site information, and all the essentials to enable them to be successful in their rotations.
“I found the induction programme very helpful as I started in CHI at Tallaght. Particularly having come from a hospital outside of the CHI network, it was useful to have a refresher on so many practical topics. I was particularly impressed by the blending of in-person site-specific induction talks with the broader cross-site talks. It definitely made the process a lot smoother.
In Children’s Health Ireland, NCHDs are important members of the team, aiming to promote and provide child-centred, research-led, learning-informed healthcare to the highest standards of safety and excellence. We do this in partnership with each other, with children, young people and their families through a network of children’s services in Ireland.