Mercy Heritage Tour - A New Update

The Mercy Heritage Tour is a multi-day experience in Ireland which significantly enriches participants' understanding of the role of Catherine McAuley in shaping the student experience and educational foundation of College of Health Professions and McAuley School of Nursing graduates. Faculty, student, and alumni participants are exposed to an international perspective of healthcare as it relates to the college's objectives during this international experience in Dublin, Ireland.

Day 3 update:

The UDM group spent the morning touring the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, a level four (highest) trauma center that serves all of Dublin. It is a research, training and clinical services hospital. The UDM group was introduced to clinical training schedules for nursing students, ways in which their course of study proceed and early transitions into their professional careers. Additionally, some context was provided on mental health services, as two members of the UDM group provide psychiatric care in the US. Tours were offered in the original buildings as well as the newest state of the art centers that have not yet opened their doors.

The original building of the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, established by the Sisters of Mercy in 1852.

A clinical placement director at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital educates the UDM group on how clinical placements and education work for nursing students at their hospital, and in Ireland more broadly. Topics of nursing majors and clinical hours were discussed.

Dolores Heery, director of mission at Mater Misericordiae, gives a presentation on the challenges of working in a modern healthcare system. Mercy Heritage Trip coordinators and UDM faculty Andrea Kwasky and Mary Serowoky listen on.
The UDM group, Olive Carney, clinical nurse manager for nurse education at Mater Misericordiae, and nursing students from Mater Misericordiae pose for a picture outside of the hospital.

The UDM group listens to Olive Carney, clinical nurse manager for nurse education at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital while standing in a newly constructed hospital wing, completed only weeks before our arrival.

The UDM group on the roof of the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, overlooking inner city Dublin, a place where healthcare workers can take a break from their jobs. Self-care and the response of the healthcare industry following the COVID pandemic were topics of discussion between Mater Misericordiae staff and students and our UDM group.

In the afternoon, the UDM group walked throughout Dublin on a guided tour led by program coordinator Susan Cahill. In these journeys, the UDM group had an opportunity to appreciate the urban context within which Catherine McAuley and her early companions were working. It also provided an understanding of McAuley's personal struggles, from a life of relative wealth and privilege to experiencing extreme weathers and at times, very little food. While traversing Dublin, students were also exposed to the contemporary urban context that mixed street culture with tourists in a complicated reality, testing of what current day poverty and resource management looks like.

We were also able to visit the convent where McAuley first entered novitiate and took her first vows.

The first 13 members of the Sisters of Mercy are buried in the crypt of St. Teresa’s Church in Dublin. UDM visited this church in order to learn about the costs of ministering to the poor in Dublin in the 1830s. These women were the earliest followers of McAuley and believed that religious women could and should go out into the community to answer the needs that were urgent.