Education, education, education!

You would have thought having gone through an undergraduate degree and then a PhD prior to coming back to medical school I would have had my fill of education but apparently not! Along with another student, I got involved in organising an optional course for third year students in medical education. Attending the course and then organising it this year has been a great experience and I’ve learnt so much about medical education and teaching theories and techniques. It’s helped me understand the different approaches the medical school use in our curriculum-combining lectures with more structured groupwork and then student led case based learning.

Before medical school I had some experience of teaching junior students in the laboratories I used to work in and at medical school I have taken part in OSCE teaching and student seminars, initiatives run by second year students in year 2 for students in first year. There are lots of opportunities to teach if this is something you are passionate about and its certainly something I would like to remain involved in as part of my future career. My enthusiasm for teaching and medical education has been encouraged by the medical school after I was asked to present my work on the medical education course at a regional conference. Myself and other students involved in student led medical education projects presented our work as part of a workshop, engaging with the audience and taking questions about our work. I also got to present my work at the local Warwick medical education conference. At both these events I got to learn so much about the challenges medical education faces and the new developments that are been made to continue improving medical education and training high quality and happy doctors.

Learning more about medical education theories certainly makes you assess your own learning from a new perspective! Having survived my speciality block 3 in Obstetrics and Gynaecology I have now moved onto my fourth block, which for me is Care of the Medical Patient. As the blocks fly by exams seem to be creeping ever closer and a sense of panic is starting to set in amongst myself and my fellow students.

Along with 3 other students I am placed at UHCW (the big hospital in Coventry) for my Care of the medical patient block. This block is designed to give us a broad overview of different medical specialities and allow us to fill in gaps we have from second year. There are a few things that I didn’t experience during core clinical education, so I’m hoping I can see more gastroenterology as I’ve made it this far through medical school without seeing many gastro patients! I would also like to see some procedures like endoscopy and bronchoscopy which I’ve never seen before. I think it’s much easier to explain a procedure to a patient if you have seen it done yourself and as this is a task that we can be asked to do as part of our clinical exams, I want to make sure I know what I’m talking about!

Watch this space to see if my enthusiasm for medical education theory can be translated into my own learning and practice!

Joanne

Luke Pemberton : 15 Jun 2017 15:44 |  Tags: Joanne Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (1) |  Report a problem