Other student supports

CoMPPAS

The RCSI Centre for Mastery: Personal, Professional and Academic Success (CoMPPAS) supports students through a dedicated team of education, career and welfare professionals. The team also helps coordinate RCSI’s orientation programme and International Citizenship Award and supports tutoring programmes. Undertaking education in the health sciences can come with a range of challenges. In response, CoMPPAS focused on the following:

Welfare and learning support highlights

Rollout of a robust student welfare programme, a highlight of which was the work on clinical placements – providing students with a platform to maintain well-being and overcome challenges while on rotation

  • Partnership between Student Welfare and the Centre for Positive Health Sciences to provide resources promoting resilience and techniques to overcome setbacks
  • Student Welfare launch of the ‘Lunchtime Social’ and ‘Hello, My name is’ campaigns to encourage vital connection through simple introductions
  • Revamp of the ‘Responding to Students in Distress’ staff workshops and adaption for students as ‘Responding to Peers in Distress’
  • Additional learning support tutors for students registered with the Learning Access and Facilitation Service (LAFS)
  • Extension of the LAFS through the roll out of staff training on working with neurodiverse students and providing an inclusive clinical placement experience

Career highlights – Innovation

  • CareerHub centre opened, providing students and staff with a physical space to support career planning
  • Development of the CareerHub online platform to improve student engagement in career readiness, elective planning and career consultancy, resulting in a 222% increase in student connectivity
  • Maintained strong North America residency match rates: 88% for USA and 79% for Canada
  • Delivered a pilot PACE programme during the Research Summer School using the ‘Designing Your Life’ framework to reach a broader student cohort
  • Delivered preliminary research findings at The Irish Network of Healthcare Educators and Equality Access Network 2025
  • Supported six StEP projects (three StEP 1 and three StEP 2)

Career highlights – Engagement

  • Collaboration with Students’ Union and student societies to host webinars emphasising personal growth and professional development
  • Attendance at the International Conference on Residency Education in Ottawa, Canada
  • CoMPPAS team members presented at the International Education Forum (IEF) and the RCSI Medical Professionalism Conference

Student partnership

Fostering a culture of student engagement and partnership equips students with key leadership and collaboration skills, empowering them to become enlightened healthcare professionals, with the capacity to transform human health in their future careers.

The RCSI Student Engagement and Partnership (StEP) programme is central to this. Launched in 2020-2021, it embeds a culture of student engagement and partnership into the fabric of RCSI – from institutional management to teaching, research and community engagement. Fully integrated across all Undergraduate schools and the School of Postgraduate Studies, StEP also aligns closely with a number of UN SDGs. Two representative outputs from 2024-2025 include:

Chagas Hub Ireland

Launched in May 2025, Chagas Hub Ireland provides free diagnostic screening for Chagas Disease, a life-threatening parasitic illness that poses a significant burden in Latin America and a hidden health issue across Europe.

With increasing Latin American migration to Ireland, early detection and awareness are critical to improving migrant health outcomes. Originating from a StEP project, spearheaded by medical student Julia Victoria Segatello Martins the Hub reflects a student-led, scalable approach to global health challenges.

“It has been the most special experience of my time at RCSI to connect with my own community and lay the foundation for a project that has the potential to transform access to healthcare for Brazilians in Ireland. This first screening event has shown the power of collaboration, community and student-led action.” – Julia Victoria Segatello Martins, Medicine Student.

A large group of smiling staff and students, all wearing the same Chagas Hub Ireland Tshirt, pose in 26 York Street.

Global surgery research course

Students and staff from RCSI and Stellenbosch University, South Africa, co-created ‘Essential Research Skills: A Global Surgery Perspective’ - the world’s first undergraduate research methods course focused on global surgery. The course exemplifies the values of StEP: student–faculty collaboration, practical learning and international partnership.