Deirdre McDonnell

"Overall it was a fantastic experience and I would recommend it to others."

Deirdre McDonnell
Clinical Trial Coordinator – Research Nurse
Medical Oncology Research Department
St. Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin

My oncology career began in 1992 at St. Vincent’s Private Hospital Dublin, where I nursed patients with cancer from diagnosis through various stages of treatments and palliative care. I was seconded to University College Dublin where I obtained a Higher Diploma in Oncological Nursing, in 1996. The development of cancer treatments became of interest to me and so my oncology research career began in 2002 and I have been working as a Clinical Trial Coordinator – Research Nurse at St. Vincent’s University Hospital Dublin, in the Medical Oncology Research department, since then. Breast and Bowel Cancer are my main areas of interest and recently I have been increasingly working on large international trials involving collaborative groups in the USA.

I heard about the Ireland-Northern Ireland-National Cancer Institute Cancer Consortium/HRB grant towards the NCI Clinical Trials Training Course for Nurses every year through email and work notice boards, but it wasn’t until 2007 that I was able to take a 5 week break away from professional and personal commitments. I applied for this exciting program and following interview I was delighted to be selected.

Sarah Condell, Mary Day and Ruth Boyd organized an excellent orientation day, for Aisling Corcoran and myself, a few weeks prior to our departure which included meeting with two former participants.

Elizabeth Ness, Georgie Cusack and Joyce Stocker organized our 5 week experience at the NCI in Bethesda, Maryland and were fantastic in providing continuous support in addition to facilitating our clinical and educational experiences. Attending the weekly course in Bioethics, an Institutional Review Board (IRB) meeting and a Protocol Review & Monitoring Committee Scientific meeting (PRMC), attending workshops on Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP), and meeting with NCI research nurses were all highlights of my experience.

Attending disease specific patient clinics was very interesting as were visits to the Research Laboratory, Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP) offices, Naval base and Cancer Information Services (CIS) offices. It was also very helpful to have library time to explore the online intranet self learning modules covering all aspects of clinical trials conduct.

Overall it was a fantastic experience and I would recommend it to others. I am very grateful to my colleagues for facilitating me during this five weeks experience.