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Email academic.registry@tcd.ieDevelop expertise in Traffic Medicine among health care professionals to support and enable safe transport mobility across the lifespan.
Enhance student’s knowledge, skills and understanding to better enable them to advise patients about how medical conditions can affect driving and how to monitor and manage these conditions.
Raise awareness about transportation policy and the importance of adopting a use/patient-centred approach in future policy development.
The Postgraduate Certificate in Traffic Medicine is a unique Level 9 programme offering specialist education in the emerging field of Traffic Medicine. It is designed for medical and allied health professionals who want to develop structured, evidence-informed knowledge in the relationship between health, mobility, driving, and road safety.
Traffic Medicine brings together clinical practice, road safety, public and occupational health, psychology, rehabilitation, transport mobility, and policy. The programme supports professionals in understanding how medical conditions, medications, functional changes, ageing, injury, or disability may affect driving and safe mobility.
Delivered fully online from September 2026 to August 2027, the programme combines flexible asynchronous learning with live online sessions. This structure allows students to study from any location while engaging with expert teaching, applied activities, and structured discussion.
A recognised Level 9 qualification
This programme leads to a Postgraduate Certificate at NFQ Level 9 and carries 30 ECTS credits.
As a credit-bearing postgraduate qualification, it provides formal academic recognition of specialist learning in Traffic Medicine. Unlike a short course or CPD event, the programme includes structured postgraduate study, academic assessment, and recognised university credit awarded by Trinity College Dublin.
Traffic Medicine is increasingly relevant across clinical practice, rehabilitation, occupational health, public health, and road safety. Healthcare professionals are often required to advise patients on whether and how health conditions may affect driving, mobility, independence, and safety.
This programme provides a structured route to developing specialist knowledge in medical fitness to drive and safe transport mobility. Students will explore Traffic Medicine in Irish, European, and global contexts and consider how clinical guidance, policy, rehabilitation, and road safety frameworks can be applied in practice.
Are you currently working within the area of Traffic Medicine or Assessing Medical Fitness to Drive?
The course aims to support professional development by enhancing participants’ knowledge, skills, and understanding of how medical conditions can affect a person's ability to drive. It equips clinicians with up-to-date guidance to better advise patients, monitor relevant conditions, and manage associated risks—ultimately supporting safer clinical practice and promoting patient safety.
This programme may be particularly relevant if your work involves clinical decision-making, patient advice, rehabilitation, occupational health, public health, mobility, or risk assessment.
It may be of interest to professionals working in areas such as:
• General Practice
• Occupational Health
• Occupational Therapy
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Public Health
• Ophthalmology or Optometry
• Neurology
• Psychiatry
• Geriatric Medicine
• Emergency Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine
• Endocrinology
• Cardiology
• Nephrology
• Rheumatology
• Orthopaedics and Trauma
• Clinical Pharmacy
• Road safety, licensing, or transport-related health policy
Successful completion of this programme at Level 9 will contribute to career advancement for individual learners within their specialist areas and also provide them with knowledge, skills and competencies that would enable them to pursue opportunities in Traffic Medicine-related areas, as well as related disciplines such as occupational health. A further incentive is that medical certification for medical fitness to drive is not included in the Irish Medical Card scheme and is a potential revenue stream for GPs: certified competency in assessing medical fitness to drive is an important support for clinicians.
A further incentive is that medical certification for medical fitness to drive is not included in the Irish Medical Card scheme and is a potential revenue stream for GPs: certified competency in assessing medical fitness to drive is an important support for clinicians.
The programme supports professional development for medical and allied health professionals whose work involves medical fitness to drive, patient safety, occupational health, rehabilitation, public health, or transport mobility.
For clinicians and allied health professionals, the programme provides structured knowledge and confidence in an area that may arise regularly in practice but is not always covered extensively in core professional training.
Traditional, Standalone. Fully online.
This course will offer a dynamic and engaging online learning experience through a structured yet flexible approach. Students can study from any location—whether at home or in the workplace—and at their own pace, thanks to the asynchronous nature of most learning activities. This flexibility allows learners to fit their studies around professional and personal commitments. Despite this, each module includes clearly defined tasks and deadlines to maintain structure and progression.
The course runs from September 2026 to August 2027 and is designed to meet the needs of full-time health care and allied health practitioners seeking flexible, part-time online learning.
This flipped-classroom approach allows students to explore foundational content independently before participating in live discussions and application-focused activities. The structure is designed to support knowledge retention, critical thinking, and practical application in real-world professional contexts.
The programme consists of three modules, each with 10 sessions, giving 30 structured learning units in total. Sessions run weekly via Blackboard Ultra and follow a consistent format to support progression, engagement, and practical application.
Module 1 Road Safety and Medical Fitness to Drive
• Safe System Approach & Vision Zero
• Road Safety as a Public Health issue
• Road Trauma in Irish Context /
• Major Trauma Audit and Road Traffic Collisions
• Understanding the driving task
• Where law meets medicine in fitness to drive
• Driver licensing laws & regulations PRAC DRIVA
• MFTD Guidelines
• MFTD assessment for licensing (on road assessment)
• MFTD assessment for licensing (off road assessment)
• Occupational Health and Driving for Work (G2 plus driving for work)
Module 2 Advanced Traffic Medicine: Evidence-based theory and practice
• Epilepsy
• Acquired brain injury, stroke and TIA
• Memory disorders, Dementia and Parkinsons
• Diabetes
• Visual disorders
• Cardiovascular disorders
• Respiratory & Sleep disorders
• Substance abuse and driving /
• Alcohol and drugs
• Psychiatric conditions
• Neurodevelopmental disorders
Module 3 Fitness to Drive Across the lifespan
• Driving as an enabler of community participation/retirement/driving cessation
• Younger drivers
• Medicines and driving
• Adult drivers including new technologies/human factors
• Adaptive Technologies 1: from Crash Safety Concepts to Products
• Adaptive Technologies 2: Vehicle Adaptations for disabled drivers
• Driver rehabilitation
• Older drivers
• Transport options
• Course Review
The modules will be delivered by Irish and international experts across road safety, engineering, occupational therapy, psychology, medicine, and related disciplines.
This multidisciplinary teaching model reflects the nature of Traffic Medicine itself, which sits at the intersection of clinical practice, mobility, public health, rehabilitation, transport systems, and road safety.
Professor Desmond O'Neill introduces the Postgraduate Certificate in Traffic Medicine programme delivered by Trinity College Dublin.
September 2026
Dr Margaret Martin, Jasmina Grino
Prof Desmond O'Neill
31 July 2026
Admission Requirements
Admission to the programme is competitive. Applicants will be expected to have an Honours Bachelor’s degree at II.1 or above/equivalent. To support this, postgraduate applicants must submit official, certified academic transcripts for all years of third-level study, detailing modules and grades. As transcripts may take several days to be issued by some universities, applicants are advised to request this document as early as possible. Applicants may also be interviewed and/or asked to submit a written sample for assessment and must meet the admissions requirements published in the Calendar Part III. Medical or allied health profession primary degree.
Applicants will also be required to provide:
All applicants to Trinity are required to provide official evidence of proficiency in the English language. Applicants to this course are required to meet Band B (Standard Entry) English language requirements. For more details of qualifications that meet Band B, see the English Language Requirements page here.
For a full list of postgraduate fees, click here.
To apply, click on the relevant Apply Link below
Register your interest in studying at Ireland’s leading university, Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin.
