DrSinead McMahon

Sinéad teaches across the undergraduate, Professional Masters and postgraduate Physiotherapy programmes at UCD. Her teaching focuses primarily on clinical education, professional practice, clinical reasoning, communication and teamwork, preparation for practice, primary healthcare and practice education.

She currently has a major role in the design, coordination and delivery of UCD’s clinical education curriculum and coordinates professional practice and clinical education modules across the physiotherapy programmes. As Director of Clinical Education, she has responsibility for supporting students as they progress from university-based learning into increasingly complex clinical practice environments.

A central focus of Sinéad’s teaching is the development of students as reflective, clinically reasoned and professionally responsible practitioners. Her teaching uses active and experiential approaches to help students integrate theoretical knowledge, clinical reasoning, communication, teamwork and professional behaviours in authentic healthcare contexts.

She has developed a number of educational initiatives designed to provide students with meaningful clinical experience prior to and during formal placement. These include the UCD Physiotherapy Hub at UCD Sport, community-based rehabilitation and health promotion initiatives, early clinical learning involving UCD sports teams, international clinical placements and technology-enhanced clinical education.

Sinéad has led the integration of virtual reality into physiotherapy education through the Erasmus+ funded VR-PAIN project, developing evidence-based virtual clinical cases in acute and chronic pain to support students' clinical reasoning and pain science education. These resources have also been used in interprofessional learning involving physiotherapy and medical students.

She has contributed extensively to programme and curriculum development. She was a core member of the team responsible for developing UCD’s Professional Masters in Physiotherapy and led the development of its clinical education component. She also co-developed postgraduate programmes in Practice Education aimed at enhancing the teaching and supervisory capabilities of healthcare professionals who educate students in clinical environments.

Sinead has particular expertise in assessment and feedback in workplace learning. She led the team of tutors in developing the Clinical Reasoning Form to support the structured development and assessment of student clinical reasoning and has developed and evaluated approaches to formative feedback for students during clinical placement and led the development of the Five Minute Feedback form used to help provision of feedback for students in busy clinical environments. 

Her teaching is strongly informed by her research into graduate preparedness, clinical education and practice-based learning, with an emphasis on ensuring that UCD physiotherapy graduates are prepared for the changing needs of contemporary healthcare.