Professional Development

The further education and professional development of our nursing staff is very important to the Tallaght University Hospital nursing service and is encouraged and supported.  We are a teaching hospital linked to Trinity College Dublin (TCD) providing a clinical learning environment for nurses and have developed links with the Institute of Technology Tallaght.

We have a Centre for Learning and Development (CLD). Programmes include pre-registration degree courses, post graduate courses, including nurse specialist practice e.g. Emergency Department Nursing, Critical Care Nursing, Renal Nursing, Perioperative Nursing, Oncology, Haematology and Orthopaedic Nursing. Other educational and professional development activities along with mandatory education/skills training such as CPR include intravenous drugs administration, return to nursing, computer skills, library skills, competency/preceptorship, various conference and study days, policy/guideline/leaflet development, meeting facilitation skills, six sigma training, and project work.

Additionally library facilities are available on site, which provide an extensive range of resources e.g. access to electronic databases both internal and external to the Hospital network.

Our hospital provides a variety of patient services, enabling many opportunities for professional development and experience in:

  • Age Related Age Care (including inpatient, day Hospital)
  • Cardiology Services including Coronary Care, Cardiac Rehabilitation, CRYP etc.)
  • Children's Services (CHI at Tallaght) including Medicine, Surgical, High Dependency, Day Care etc
  • Day Care including pre assessement, dermatology, endoscopy etc
  • Diabetic Centre
  • Emergency Department (Adult Services)
  • Emergency Department (Children's Services)
  • Haematology
  • Management
  • Informatics
  • Intensive Care
  • Medicine (General, Renal, Neuroscience, Respiratory, Gastroenterology)
  • Out-patients
  • Post Anaesthetic Care
  • Renal Services including Haemodialysis, day care etc.
  • Surgery (General, Orthopaedics, Gynaecology, Vascular, Urology)
  • Theatre

Nurse Practice Development (NPD)

There are two NPD departments within Tallaght University Hospital

  • Nurse Practice Development - Adult Services
  • Nurse Practice Development - Children's Services

The Nurse Practice Development departments role includes:

  • Facilitating, evaluating, developing, implementing and monitoring nursing practice in all areas of the hospital.
  • Managing the nursing service continuous quality improvement programmes in such a way as to support and ensure the delivery of the highest standard of patient focused care throughout the hospital.
  • Through supervision of the Clinical Placement Co-ordinators ensuring that the clinical areas in the Hospital, to which students are assigned for clinical placements, provide optimum learning environments and are capable of meeting the learning objectives set by the third level educational institutes.
  • Overseeing the organisation of pre-registration clinical placements.
  • Coordinating the development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the structures and processes to support safe nurse prescribing which meets the requirements of Tallaght University Hospital and is compliant with the requirements and standards of the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland and the Health Service Executive.
  • Responsibility for clinical nursing research within the Hospital.

They have numerous aims which include:

  • Focus on patient centred care.
  • Promote and facilitate change.
  • Develop individual skills and competence
  • Support ward staff involvement in specific projects.
  • Facilitate service wide initiatives in collaboration with interdisciplinary staff.
  • Identify and prioritise clinical issues and assist clinicians in resolving such issues.
  • Promote a bottom up approach to change.
  • Facilitate and promote the management and improvement of services.
  • Facilitate and promote auditing/continuous quality improvement.
  • Maximise the most effective clinical learning environment.
  • Support the Clinical Nurse Specialist/Advanced Nurse Practitioner to develop their roles.
  • Promote research in practice.

Centre for Learning and Development (CLD)

For information on the Centre for Learning and Development click here