“I was disappointed when I got my Leaving Cert results and didn’t get the points for nursing. I got offered arts in UCC but I would only have been accepting for the sake of going to college. I considered repeating but decided against it.
“Then I started to have a look at further education and training and saw that there was a prenursing course that could give me a route into college and a career in nursing. It also gave me a chance to consider whether nursing really was for me and whether I’d like it.
“There were about six of us in the prenursing group, mixed in with the healthcare group of students. We have similar modules and we also had lab classes where we learned how to take blood pressure and carry out all the physical jobs nurses do. We also did placements once a week and I was in the local community hospital every Friday; I really enjoyed that and it helped me to make up my mind.
Nine distinctions
“To qualify for a place in nursing from a PLC nursing course, you have to get nine distinctions. That was hard work but I really wanted the place, so I got the nine distinctions and got my offer from UCD.
“In my first year, I realised how much the prenursing course stood to me, as much of the content was the same as at the end of first year.
“I’m now heading into my final year studying nursing at UCD, and I’ve had such a brilliant experience. I am a bit sad that campus will be so different this year because of the need for social distancing – there are 200 nurses in my course and it’s always great to see everyone in lectures, but now in our final year we probably won’t be around each other as much.
“Covid-19 hasn’t changed how I feel about nursing. But it has given me and my classmates new skills that we might not have had without the pandemic and I think it will make us into much more conscientious graduate nurses.”
