RCSI teaching hospital, Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown recently held its first awards ceremony for interns. The inaugural Keeling Intern Award was won by Dr Kathryn Kuan for her case report and literature review on ‘Complications of endocarditis'.

Dr Kuan was presented with the prize by Mr Keeling and Dr Tommy Kyaw-Tun, Consultant Endocrinologist and Senior Lecturer at a ceremony in the RCSI Academic Centre at Blanchardstown on Wednesday, 9 July.

This award is named after Mr Parnell Keeling member of the RCSI Council, who retired from public service recently but is still practicing privately.

Speaking on the award, Keeling said, “It is an honour to be back at Connolly Hospital to present this award. The standards of the submissions were excellent and clearly much effort had been put in to the papers. I would encourage the new incoming interns to take an interest in noting cases from which they can learn and write up.”

The purpose of the Keeling intern award is to encourage and promote excellence and enthusiasm in academic writing for publication amongst interns at Connolly Hospital.

The other finalists were Dr Steven Duff and Dr Laura Murphy who wrote cases entitled ‘Rocuronium-induced anaphylaxis and sugammadex and ‘Spontaneous perforation of an ileal conduit' respectively. Marks were awarded for clarity of writing, accurate and appropriate referencing, case relevance to the wider audience and teaching points.

Dean of RCSI's Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Professor Hannah McGee, paid tribute to Mr Parnell Keeling and Dr Kathryn Kuan by saying, “Firstly, I am delighted that this award has been named after Mr Keeling. It is difficult to think of a person more deserving based on all his years of service to both his patients and RCSI students at Connolly Hospital. It is all the more inspiring to see this award from his peers to Parnell as a graduate himself of the RCSI. I would also like to congratulate Kathryn on this accolade which acknowledges the high quality of her approach to her early clinical career. I wish her well for the future.”