RCSI Ambassador Award: Dr Muirne Spooner

Dr Muirne Spooner is the 2025 recipient of the RCSI Ambassador Award for her commitment and service to the University as well as her enduring support for RCSI students, faculty and fellow alumni. Read's Muirne's story below.

There were no doctors in my family, but even as a child I had a keen interest in looking after people. One of my summer jobs was childminding, which I really enjoyed. The summer I turned 15, I was minding two little boys and one day I heard their mum call out from upstairs where she had been bathing their little sister who was only six weeks old.

The baby had fallen off the changing table and had to be rushed to hospital. Thankfully she was okay, but I vividly remember the complete sense of helplessness I felt and the overwhelming desire to know more, to be able to do more in such a situation. That experience spurred me on to study medicine.

I was only 17 when I started Medicine at University College Dublin (UCD) and truthfully, I didn’t really enjoy the first few years. I had little interest in anatomy or biochemistry and struggled to contextualise how the theory would apply in practice when treating patients. The experience became better when I entered the clinical years but I continued to feel a sense of uncertainty – was I doing things right, would I ever be good enough?

I think the challenges I experienced during my time at university have shaped how I connect with our students – I know what it is like to struggle to adjust to the demanding nature of studying medicine, to feel like you know nothing! The advice I give them is to focus on what you can control and one of the fundamental things in this regard is taking the time to really get to know yourself ... reflect on key questions that will give you a better sense of self – what motivates me, what stresses me out, what excites me, what do I enjoy outside of medicine? 

Combining commitments

After graduation I completed an internship in internal medicine in St Vincent’s before moving to Beaumont to complete basic specialist training. I had wonderful colleagues, mentors and supervisors but I began to find it very frustrating and stressful. Little things like the struggle to find beds for patients made me feel very disheartened and I also had a tendency to bring my work home and struggled to switch-off.

Once again, it all comes back to taking the time to get to know yourself and I realised that I needed to take a step back and figure out if practicing in a hospital was right for me. It was at this point that an opportunity to take a year out to teach arose and I quickly developed a real passion for it. After that year I returned to Beaumont as a respiratory registrar, but I kept dipping into teaching, and ultimately, six years after I qualified as a doctor, I decided to dedicate myself to teaching and to seek more experience and qualifications.

I undertook my PhD in Health Professions Education after completing a postgraduate diploma in the area. It was a wonderful experience – getting to work on something that you’re very passionate about, delving deep into one area. It wasn’t easy but that’s true of a lot of things in life.

My research focused on feedback literacy, student agency and cultural transitions in learning. It was fascinating to hear from the students and to understand the barriers that sociocultural differences present.

Take for instance an Irish medical student speaking with a patient from Tipperary the day after the All-Ireland Hurling Final – that student will use that knowledge to build a rapport, whereas you look at a Canadian medical student whose sporting frame of reference is ice hockey and is completely unaware that the game even took place. Then you add other attributes like gender into the mix, and you realise that there is a whole cohort of medical students who feel neglected or overlooked.

The conversations I had with students while completing my PhD research were really illuminating and reinforced my belief dialogue with students is central to being a good teacher. If you’re not engaging with them, if you’re not asking them what they need as a learner then you’re teaching in a vacuum.

I am conscious also that students may not be familiar with being asked for their feedback and might even find that confronting. They may not want to lose face or be the one person who says, ‘you know what, I’m struggling with this’. In response to this my tactic has been to be a paradigm of failure ... I tell them everything that I messed up or that I didn’t understand. I actively try to normalise the fact that as a student, as a qualified doctor, as a human being you will make mistakes. I think it is important that our students understand that when they ask a question, the person in front of the whiteboard or leading rounds isn’t going to laugh or berate them.

Community-engaged learning

This year I was appointed to the role of Deputy Dean of Interprofessionalism and Community Engaged Learning in RCSI. It is an area I feel incredibly passionate about. The goal of community engaged learning is to provide people who might not normally get access to healthcare with opportunities to attend clinics supported by medical students. I think this is hugely important – whether in rural or urban areas there is huge inequity in terms of health and healthcare. For me community engaged learning brings together all the parts of medicine that I really care most about: elements of social justice, sustainability, equity.

People don’t need to book into the clinics; they come when it suits them and have an opportunity to sit down with the students and discuss their health concerns. We have people coming in who want to cut down on smoking or lose weight, but they don’t know where to start. The students get to help them by giving real, practical advice.

It gives the students an insight into the complexities of real life ... sure we can tell a person that quitting smoking will improve their health but speaking to someone who has been using smoking as a crutch since they were 12 years of age – that is a very different story!

I also believe it enables students to create meaningful connections, to learn how to build trust and rapport with people – being able to empathise with your patients, to share decision-making with them, to offer them education is such an important part of being a doctor.

Within each clinic we have time built in for a debrief where a faculty member will sit with the group and unpack any challenges that they encountered during the day, so that they really feel supported and also have the time to process their feelings and reflect on what they might do differently in a different in that situation in the future.

For me, community engaged learning is yet another step in the right direction in terms of ensuring our students become doctors who are clinically excellent but also recognise that patients don’t just care about getting treatment – they care about how their family, their livelihood, their quality of life will be impacted.

The future

When I think back to the start of my career the idea of being both a doctor and an educator never occurred to me.

Even when I started to explore the idea of becoming an educator, it was an avenue that wasn’t really recognised. I know of colleagues who were sceptical but I’m so grateful that RCSI gave me the opportunity to balance being a clinician with doing a PhD.

I’d like to think that in a few years' time being a health professional educator will become yet another established career pathway within medicine.