Luke Mase - Ireland

This summer, I did a clinical externship with the Dublin Zoo in Ireland as well as exploring the One Health operations of University of College Dublin (UCD) through the support of the UCD Squared Transatlantic One Health Alliance. 

Over the two weeks at the Zoo, my classmate Noah McNaughton designed quarantine protocols such as importing meercat residents internationally for the Zoo. We researched and crafted diagnostic and treatment plans for residents including a work up for an ibis ulcerative dermatitis case, a chimpanzee traumatic injury, an orangutan and flamingo infection, and a tortoise nasopharyngeal infection. The latter, we worked hand in hand with UCD vet school’s CT department. The highlight of working with the animals at the Zoo was aiding in the first-ever hippo cataract surgery. With the help of a visiting French Zoo and ophthalmology vets, a Spanish vet, as well as our anesthesiologist mentor from UCD and the whole Dublin Zoo team, we successfully performed the cataract phacoemulsification, performed a dental, collected bloodwork, and applied a motion monitor. When we were not caring for animals in the Zoo, we worked with its livestock outreach program to help animals such as the local convent’s sick sheep.

In addition to patient care, Noah and I participated in lots of research with the Zoo as well as learning research going on at UCD. With the Zoo, we performed a necropsy of a beached 19-foot True’s Beaked Whale to help determine the cause of death of a series of whale deaths across the Netherlands, Ireland, and Scottland. We also learned about the Spanish vet’s research with the hippo’s motion monitor where camera footage was synced with the monitor to characterize animal behaviors. The goals was to use the technology in future  zoo animals as a noninvasive means of assessing welfare and health. Lastly, we rounded, toured labs, and discussed research with virologist teams and one health researchers at UCD. There, we learned about their successful findings on point sources for Hepatitis E in pork products through PCR and viroid implantation through organoid development. There lab had also researched COVID zoonoses in deer and was developing novel diagnostic tools for medicine such as nano-CT.

As the grandson of an Irish immigrant, this first trip to Ireland allowed me to more deeply connect with my heritage and culture. Throughout my time in Dublin while on externship, I was warmed by the hospitality of everyone we met. Our housemates would offer us tons of recommendations for places to visit and would entertain us with the local pub life. Across the many pubs and the EPIC Emigration museum, we got to embrace the ethnic trad music. I had heard the tunes from watching family do Irish step dance in the states, but listening to it live inspired me and family to visit Fleadh Trad Music Festival in Wexford on our week stay after my externship. All the while, I got to see my grandfather’s birthplace in Cobh, I got to try Irish recipes from cooking classes I took in the states, and I got to indulge in the rich storytelling of the natives. Across the stories and the EPIC museum, I learned the country’s history of oppression, poverty, and famine and how that molded their charming modern culture of humor and hospitality. It was all so wonderful, and as a citizen of Ireland, this networking and the enriching exploration of Ireland may be enough to set me up for a future life there some day.